


dear apparition

by shoutz



Series: snow, as she falls [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Drinking, F/M, Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Named Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Questionable Aetherology, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:02:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22012276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoutz/pseuds/shoutz
Summary: Dear apparition, in this fleeting flash,Must I burn the earth before you turn to ash?Would such extremes repair our broken past?The silver lining seldom lies in sight too plain to see,But trust our story's end can bring redemption for the pain endured...Of love, and loss, and what it means to move on.His lips quirk up into the faintest hint of a smile, weary but somehow content. Golden eyes soften, just a touch, just enough that she knows it’s genuine. But she’d know that anyways — he doesn’t lie. He never lied.Emet-Selch does not say goodbye.
Relationships: Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Series: snow, as she falls [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1572478
Comments: 97
Kudos: 131





	1. parting, and...

**Author's Note:**

> Will contain spoilers for Shadowbringers and onwards.
> 
> Title from [The Moon / Awake — The Dear Hunter](https://youtu.be/oAkLNdM2T2M)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the end, with a few liberties taken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title: [Parting, and... — Xenoblade Chronicles OST](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr1qSbDOB_4)

Blinding, apocalyptic light finally fades into something more visible. Ardbert’s axe, sweet and compassionate and kindhearted Ardbert, is imbedded in the ground. Around it, around the whole platform, the quiet ruins of a beautiful city stretch ever upwards. The empty husks of massive buildings which are no longer smoldering, and no longer so horrifying save for what they represent. Overhead and all around them, the sky glows with a sunrise, or perhaps a sunset, lacking all of its prior pitch black doom and fire and destruction. It's quiet. Almost peaceful.

She can see all of this through the gaping, glowing hole in his torso. An unrecoverable wound — one inflicted by her own hand mere moments before. The blow had drained so much aether and strength from her bones, enough that it’s a miracle she still stands upright, but it had taken so much _more_ from him. Even so, her chest feels as hollow, as empty, as his.

No sign remains of the eldritch abomination that had been Hades. Left over is merely a man, clad in black robes with enough sadness in his eyes to drown a continent’s worth of people. She can only assume this is his true form, stripped of all notions of grandeur and manipulation and fury. Emet-Selch, without his power and without his flourish.

Emet-Selch. Ascian.

“Remember… Remember us…” His voice is the closest thing to a whisper without being lost in the space between them. Void of all condescension, of snark and amusement and the catastrophic rage that had claimed him mere moments before. It’s deeper this way, and more solemn. She knows with a stark clarity that it’s a voice that will haunt her to her grave.

He closes his eyes, a slow blink, and never before has the darkness beneath his eyes clung so closely to his visage. His mouth and brows are set in a stony frown, though it lacks the anger and the fight to be anything more than exhaustion. She feels it in her own bones, too, and something overwhelming besides, something cold and cruel and crippling spreading throughout each and every strand of her being. Breaths grow more and more difficult for her to take, but her enemy — her ally — her _friend_ — _no, more than that_ — stands utterly still.

But notably, he stands taller than before. His shoulders are finally unburdened of the weight of his people, of his longing, of his everlasting vigil as he toiled to bring about their return. No longer does Zodiark haunt his shadow, keeping him pinned beneath a mighty tempered thumb.

“Remember…that we once lived.”

_Not that you would remember any of this._

Some of the last words he had said, as more than enemies, though less than friends, even less than allies. Perched on the precipice of working together, towards the same end though not for the same reasons. But that was before she failed, before the world began to crumble around her, before the city _he_ made turned to ash and ruin. And now he stands before her, beseeching her to remember, _remember_.

What is there to remember?

Remember Amaurot, gleaming so far beneath the surface. A haunting portrait of what once was. She wants to scream. He had said she would like it but that didn't come _close_. It had been awe-inspiring. Mesmerizing. Breathtaking, even. Everything he had said it would be and so much more than that.

The frustration of not knowing makes her ill. It was like nothing she had ever seen before. How could she remember? And yet even without knowledge of what she should remember, there lingers a dim ember of nostalgia glowing within her, a bittersweetness that made her chest ache even as she looked upon it as it once was. But there’s nothing. She can’t fathom forgetting a place so opulent and spectacular. Yet he begs her to _remember?_

_Well rest assured that if your heart can be broken, then so can mine!_

She feels the veneer crack and fall to splinters as her face twists into some wretched expression. Her last bastion at holding back the tears, the anguish, the grief, dissolved in mere moments. And he’s not even gone. Scant seconds remain but she clutches them dearly, taking in the final sight of him, the _truest_ version of him — though he never quite lied in the first place. She’s grateful that the others can’t see her face because the shame of shattering so spectacularly before their eyes would be too much to bear, both for them and for her.

She nods, once, not trusting her lungs to convey any message save for a sob broken enough to sunder the world. _I will remember,_ she tries to make him understand without words, _whether I like it or not, I will remember. Or I will die trying._

_As ever._

The light outlining the hole in his torso grows ever brighter. She refuses to look away even for a moment, refuses to blink even as tears well and pour down her cheeks, washing away bits of soot and grime. This is not something she can dismiss, or ignore, or forget. She has come this far and fought this hard against him, despite her desperation to find some common ground on which they could both stand, a common cause for them to fight _together_. Through it all, he has earned his place in the crooks of her heart, the soft parts she holds dear — somewhere among the ranks of Moenbryda, Haurchefant, Ysayle, Papalymo, Ardbert. But different, so different. Mourning Emet-Selch will be a pain all its own, fresh and foreign and frightening beyond measure.

His lips quirk up into the faintest hint of a smile, weary but somehow content. Golden eyes soften, just a touch, just enough that she knows it’s genuine. But she’d know that anyways — he doesn’t lie. He never lied.

Emet-Selch does not say goodbye.

Blue wisps of light scatter. Had she been of a mind to pay attention, she would have seen one rogue wisp fly straight through her sternum. All is silent. Where once stood a man, an enemy, a friend, perhaps more…remains naught but a soft glow which quickly fades.

Her foundation crumbles. She hiccups a sob, a broken noise barely concealing a wail with enough despair to reach the highest heavens and the deepest hells. Her chest and lungs heave with all the longing and heartbreak and catharsis of a fight well fought and a job well done. A tired soul screams for release with all the anguish she’s ever known, but keeps itself pacified as she feels the weight of six sets of eyes on her back, and all their expectations besides. It’s clear in that moment why Emet-Selch’s shoulders hung so low.

But the Warrior of Light stands tall. As is her wont.

“It’s over,” Alphinaud says, the first to make a hesitant approach, “Emet-Selch is no more!”

She doesn’t respond. How could she? The hope she sees in his eyes would be such a shame to lose. She wipes her cheeks in the hopes that her momentary lapse in stoicism is overlooked, turning to acknowledge the others.

Alisaie joins her brother at her side, quick to worry. “More importantly, how do _you_ fare?”

Another question unanswered. They do not need to know her heart, not in this moment. Y’shtola approaches alongside Urianger, sensing something none of them can see despite their collective ability to see at all. He begs the question on all their minds, and she responds, “Her aether… It is… It is as it used to be.” She rears back in surprise. “As a disciple of Zodiark, the Ascian was the Darkness to your Light…”

Her thoughts drift after that, not willing to focus on the present with so much roiling beneath the surface. The Crystal Exarch, hood finally bunched around his shoulders instead of obscuring his face, rejoins them. Conversation floats around her, barely registering in her mind. A few carefully dodged questions and conversations later finds them making their weary way back to The Crystarium, though the atmosphere remains heavy around them.

It’s an emotional homecoming insofar as they are all emotional and call The Crystarium home, though it’s more of a temporary placeholder until they can return to the Source. The Warrior of Light gives the bare minimum to appease them all, shaken hands and smiles and nods of her head, before finally escaping to her chambers.

The quiet she finds is haunting. It poses such a stark contrast from the rousing applause and conversations that seemed to pass around her as if she were standing in a stream. The last time she had felt the weight of such silence, Emet-Selch had been alive.

She wraps the silence around herself like a blanket, and lets out a trembling breath.

Slow steps carry her to the edge of her bed. The sun has barely set but she finds herself weary in more ways than one, enough that she could sleep for eons. But once she finally sheds her armor and lays down, rest evades her, and she instead stares at the ceiling, mind blank and heart aching.

Finally alone and in the safety of her own chambers, the Warrior of Light _shatters._


	2. so this is closure?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She thrives, and he seethes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title: [Stuck in Remission — Mayday Parade](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6APxwIt2No)

Emet-Selch wakes, and it’s the first surprise of many.

He would usually be quick to anger at such an annoyance, but its fiery yoke is less potent than it had once been. He had been so content in his rest, well-deserved after so many lifetimes spent in endless pursuit of the Rejoining.

But what he sees upon waking is yet more befuddling.

The Warrior of Light sleeps soundly, deeply, shallow breaths barely moving her shoulders. She lays curled towards the wall, obscuring his view, but there's no doubt of her identity. Who else could it be?

Who else but the one around whom he seemed doomed to orbit until his final days? And even beyond them, it seems.

Intrigued, he observes the room surrounding the sleeping form held safe within. Her room in The Pillars is as it ever was, spacious and tidy and comfortable. Several stacks of books and papers cover most surfaces, whether at the desk or the larger table meant for meals. Upon first glance they’re reports and calculations on dealings from the Source, troop movements and intelligence she could not have procured on this world.

_She can return to the Source then. And already has, it seems. Curious. What keeps her here? I suppose her Scions remain yet trapped upon this shard, but would she stay for solely their sakes? And what of the Exarch?_

A keen interest burns through him with this newfound ability to pry through her notes and information unimpeded, a rare opportunity to be as nosy as suits his fancy until she wakes up. An opportunity he will gladly take.

Emet-Selch does not expect his fingers to pass directly through the stiff leather cover when he reaches down to leaf through one of the tomes, but they do and it stuns him. He hazards another attempt, on instinct, maybe _this_ time, but his lack of corporeality does not change. He makes a sweeping motion as if to shove the books and papers from the desk’s surface and onto the floor in a clamor, but they don’t so much as budge from their positions.

The realization shakes him. He walks over to the sleeping hero and attempts to jostle her awake, to rouse her, but he slips through her form entirely. Emet-Selch stumbles backwards, staring down at his hands as his foundation cracks.

“Am I to be your ghost now?” he asks the room, and it’s in defeat. Hearing his own voice is different, though, and it sets him alight once again with the possibility, the mere chance of having even the smallest sway over the world around him. “Wake up!” he yells, desperate. There is no response. “Can you hear me, hero?”

Still nothing. The only noise covering her faint breathing is the breeze that sweeps past the window on the far end of the room. His shoulders fall, a small surrender, as his mind tries to parse how to respond to his current circumstances. He takes several steps away from her, away from the bed, and finds himself drenched in moonlight, though it merely passes through his form to spill upon the floor.

“Is it my curse to haunt you?”

The _as you haunted me_ goes unsaid. Even with the knowledge she cannot hear him, it’s nigh impossible to give voice to the thought.

The inklings of a fight that had risen within him at the notion of being trapped here in this form rapidly dissipates. It irks him how quick he is to accept defeat, but what else can he do? Lacking any other stimuli besides reading the spines of books strewn about, he turns to the window and watches the stars make their glacial way across the night sky. A night sky, restored by the creature sleeping soundly not even a yalm behind him.

He continues to watch, even as deep black begins to brighten, just before the sun crests the distant mountains. He tries to think of a way out of this situation, either one way or the other, but draws endless blanks for both. It disturbs him to be so wholly helpless, a singular consciousness floating amidst the void.

Hours must pass, because eventually the Warrior of Light stirs from her sleep. He turns towards her, motionless, watching as she rolls over. She sits up and rubs the bleariness out of her eyes. Hair sticks up in several directions, thoroughly mussed though she spent most of the night motionless.

She stands and pads closer, towards Emet-Selch, whose breath halts in his lungs. Frozen in place, like startled prey. It’s incredible to him how such a small creature could incite such fear, such panic.

She killed him once, though, a fact which he could never forget.

The Warrior of Light walks closer, and closer, and then passes directly through Emet-Selch to stand by her window and greet the morning sun. It cascades across her skin, bathing her in a warm sideways glow where it had once passed directly through Emet-Selch’s translucent form. He watches her shoulders rise and fall with a quiet sigh, silhouetted by the sky outside. He debates walking around to her front, to see her face as she looks upon the world she saved, but the frustration and panic and loneliness churning through his chest keep his feet planted.

She yawns, stretching her arms over her head, and then begins to prepare for a new day.

* * *

Emet-Selch can do nothing but watch.

It’s quite fitting, really. A joke most cruel.

He spends the first few days experimenting, prodding at the limits of this new form. She cannot see his entirely incorporeal form, nor can she hear him no matter how he tries to catch her attention. Though there almost seems to be a glint of recognition, of _something,_ after she fights particularly frightful monsters or expends large quantities of aether… It could be mere happenstance. Those moments he spends watching her carefully, reading her strength and analyzing her anew without the weight of Zodiark’s thrall holding him prone. A fresh examination, free of the expectation of enmity. Information once used to manipulate, repurposed. He holds these new and fascinating observations close to his chest, and all they may mean besides.

But the fact remains: he is unseen, unheard, unfelt. The Warrior of Light remains ignorant of her silent passenger.

He can stray but a hundred yalms from her before an unseen force draws him back. Thus, when she moves, he finds himself pulled along against his will like a balloon tied to her coattails. Whether in the First or the Source, there is no escaping her.

And so, he watches.

The silence is what grates on him the most. She doesn’t speak often, and moments alone can turn so overbearingly quiet that Emet-Selch almost forgets who he is, where he is, why he’s there. Nothing but the errant turn of a page or a casual stretch to pull him back to reality. He spends the first few days impatient, pacing, frantically ranting about whatever mild annoyance comes to mind. Hours upon hours of _what am I meant to see_ and _am I cursed to shadow you until the world’s end_ and, as ever, _what did I do to deserve such a fate?_

His questions turn to monologues, fragments of thoughts pouring from his mouth like water from a tap. Speeches, muses, even recitations of poetry from a time long lost. Memories resurface from before the Sundering and he recounts them in gruesomely clear detail. On particularly bad nights he finds himself singing; old songs from a world he loved so dearly find their way through his lungs and into the dead air, until he runs out and resorts to formless melodies hummed without rhythm. Some of the thoughts and memories and songs even address her to varying lengths, though he remains safe in the knowledge that she can’t hear them. They stay close to his chest, functionally, but speaking them to dead air — while she sits blissfully unaware at her desk thumbing through a book — is a cathartic act within itself. They are thoughts he had longed to share, musings and questions and trains of thought he had endlessly entertained exploring with her some day. Some day when she would remember. But without the time or attention to spare to such frivolity, they had remained in his head, festering beneath the weight of Zodiark and the Rejoining and all else that drove Emet-Selch to breaking.

He follows her to the markets. He follows her to The Empty, where her cronies fumble around with a new mystery. He follows her into battle, sitting on the sidelines as she fights and wins, unfalteringly. He follows her into the Exarch’s Ocular, listens as they try to hatch a scheme to get her friends back to the Source despite her ability to flit back and forth seemingly at will. He watches her pick flowers, and kill lesser beasts, and travel. Oh, there’s more travelling than he could have ever imagined. Where before she had rushed through the landscapes, she now elects to take her time, exploring and relishing the world she had saved. Without a war tugging her this way and that, she seeks out the solitude of high perches and low caverns, of beautiful forests and vacant waters.

She watches the sun rise silently over horizons in every part of the world, and their sunsets once the day is spent. Sometimes Emet-Selch finds himself wishing she would say something, _anything_ to let him know what transpires behind her eyes, but there’s naught but unreadable expressions and tranquil, overwhelming silences.

It’s infuriating.

It’s _horribly_ boring.

He never sees her mourn. He never sees her break. Even in the moments when she’s truly and utterly alone, save for himself, she keeps her head. He does his best to search for meaning amidst the smiles, to read her resilience for what it is instead of what it seems to be, but with so much time to do so and so little give, it’s too easy to talk himself in circles. She’s bright and cheerful when she speaks with the Scions, compassionate when she helps the citizens of the First with whatever might trouble them. She even cares for the dwarves digging through the Copied Factory, though her patience runs thinner and thinner as time wears on. 

It stings to be forgotten so. Gnaws at him without end. To be so summarily dismissed by…

Nevermind.

The fact of the matter is that even after saving a world — the second by Emet-Selch’s count, and they are two more than he could manage — the Warrior of Light remains undaunted, unbowed, stalwart. Her kind smile reaches her eyes and it’s strong in a way that makes his skin crawl. Is she truly still whole, after all she suffered? After all she lost?

The bitterness fades as the days pass. Instead of frustrated or annoyed, Emet-Selch grows resigned. His monologuing becomes rambling, barely coherent, almost _soft_ in both its content and its tone. Sickening. He asks her questions and imagines her answers, tries to imitate them himself though he lacks the skill for it. He points out errors in her form and incantations while she fights. He makes snide responses to pitiful First natives begging her help with some trivial errand. His favorite pastime is when he gets to read aloud over her shoulder, reciting histories and theories on myriad topics from her ever-expanding collection of books as she reads them. It’s a race to keep up with her, to finish a page before she turns to the next. Entertainment is scant but he takes what he can get.

But tonight is different.

Instead of peaceful her nightly reading is fidgety, agitated. Something seems to crawl beneath her skin, rendering her incapable of focus. She shifts endlessly in her seat, a cacophony compared to her usual calm silence. Her leg bounces. Fists clench and unclench. The energy in the room is nervous to a point that cannot possibly be ignored. Emet-Selch cannot imagine what might make her squirm so. Nothing happened out of the ordinary during the day, nothing particularly troubling — and he would know. He can but watch, endlessly.

It becomes too much. She stands and shuts her book with a resounding _thunk_ before her feet bring her back and forth across her quarters, wringing her hands. Thin white scars curl up them and beneath her sleeves, and it catches his eye; an aftereffect of that much Light coursing through and out of her, to be sure, but he chides himself for not noticing them sooner. Her anxiety is contagious and Emet-Selch burns with curiosity to know what ails her, watching with rapt attention. Can she feel his eyes on her? Can she sense the presence of another? What _happened?_

Emet-Selch does not ask, knowing that silence and continued footsteps will be his only response. Instead, he sits and watches as their usual roles flip: one silent while the other paces restlessly, desperate for something.

He had been desperate to be seen, to be heard, to be free of this lingering existence in one way or the other. Her desperation, however, remains a mystery.

Eventually, her eyes catch on a bottle of liquor set upon her table. It’s been there the entirety of her stay within the First, among a few other bottles from which she could choose should the mood find her. It strikes him as curious that her eyes fall upon it at all, for she has not touched alcohol a single day he has known her.

She picks up the liquor and studies the label, the seal on the top, searching with keen eyes for some sign of tampering. He shudders to think of what may have happened in the past to elicit such scrutiny of an innocent bottle.

After a pause, she finds it satisfactory and removes the cork. Without further contemplation she takes a swig, and another for good measure. She sits and slouches in one of the chairs, wincing at the burn of the alcohol. One last drink passes her lips before she rests her head on the tabletop.

She’s still long enough to make him worry, though he’s not sure what he could do if anything were to happen to her. Unseen, unheard, and unfelt. Even if he were to find help for her, it would be near impossible to get it to her in any timely fashion. And what a way to go: dying alone while the man she killed watches on.

Eventually she sits up, much to Emet-Selch’s relief, but a new determination finds its way into her eyes, overshadowing the sorrow and turmoil awaiting beneath. Swift steps carry her to her cloak where it hangs on a hook, and once it’s fastened around her shoulders she swipes the bottle and begins teleporting away.

Emet-Selch blinks, and he’s home. The high spires and pristine streets of Amaurot greet his eyes, and it startles a breath out of his lungs. Just as stunning as he had left it. Eager eyes take in its splendor, after having spent so long away. His feet remain planted but he drifts along, pulled by the Warrior of Light as she flies to parts unknown.

She doesn’t venture far. A few moments later find her dismissing her mount atop the tallest building within reach: the capitol. She takes her seat on one of the tall facets of architecture, legs dangling over the edge as she overlooks the city. Larger buildings loom in the distance and if he were not so speechless, he would wax poetic about what purpose they once served, what once transpired within.

Not that she would hear.

She leans back on an arm and uses the other to take another drink. Emet-Selch cannot imagine what drove her here, of all places, though he knows her fondness of high places and solitude. Even less can he fathom why the simple change in scenery has calmed her nerves.

No, it’s the alcohol. Surely. Probably.

He sits beside her after a few long minutes spent admiring his home. It’s quiet. Wind would howl and tear at their clothes were they not situated far beneath the Tempest. She lays back and stares up at a shifting bluegreen sky, searching for something within its depths, or just looking for the sake of looking. To admire.

A song drifts to his ears, hummed softly but carrying well thanks to the surrounding serenity. It’s beautiful, though foreign to him, and likely foreign to her. It’s not perfect, he picks out a flat note here and there, but he listens nonetheless.

It drifts away, after a while, and Emet-Selch is sad to hear it go. He almost thinks she’s fallen asleep, before her form jolts upright with a gasp.

“I nev — _hic_ — I never…” She sways, uneasy, and Emet-Selch watches in careful fear, hoping that she does not somehow tip off the edge of the platform. “I never buried them.”

His mind races. It’s the most she’s ever said in their moments alone and it begets questions which beget even more questions. He looks to her, startled. _Them?_ Could she mean him, of all people? But that implies more— Who else would there be to bury? Who would even attend such a grim funeral? Here lies Solus zos Galvus, Emet-Selch, Hades: the Ascian who missed his home so much he would sunder the world thirteen times over to get it back.

She frowns, thoughtful as she stares out into Amaurot. “But there’s nothing to bury… Just… Just nothing…” Her chest tightens, and the last few words are a strain. There’s a long silence, and for once, Emet-Selch does not ache to fill it. After another drink passes her lips she lays back down, kicking her foot up and down off the edge of the platform. “Don’t need corpses. Ysayle didn’t. And… Papalymo. I’ll just…stick a rock somewhere. Big one. Carve into it.” She squints at something in the distance. “Need…flowers.” She drapes an arm over her eyes, groaning. “I don’t know flowers.”

It startles a chuckle from Emet-Selch, watching bemusedly as she does what he had done so long, yet sober and unheard.

She hums, thoughtful. “Maybe ‘Shtola knows flowers. In… Rak’tika. Lakeland probably has flowers? Or… Il… Il…” She grapples for the name. “Pixie place.”

She stands resolutely and wobbles, though luck carries her weight closer to the center of the platform instead of the edge. Her shoulders rise and fall with a deep, steadying breath, before she begins to cast her teleportation spell again.

Emet-Selch blinks, again, but does not find himself in Il Mheg.

A blizzard rages around them, enveloping the world around them in a swirling mass of white chaos amidst the darkness. Even with a cloak around her shoulders, the chill is relentless; he can see the tension in her jaw as she clutches her arms tighter on herself. Winds batter her yet pass right through Emet-Selch’s body. She stumbles forward a step, desperate for any respite, the Aetheryte, any shelter from this onslaught, but she finds none. Instead she collapses to her knees in the cold. Panicked, he moves to hold her close, to shield her from the storm, but his arms pass through her. Again. _Again._

He hisses out a curse, and shouts another, frustration simmering to a boil at his helplessness.

_“Help! Anybody! Please!”_

The Warrior of Light falls forward into the snow, nearly buried by its depth. Immediately more flakes begin covering her form, obscuring her from any potential saviors who may stumble upon her here. He screams, he _wails,_ for questions unanswered, for helplessness, for losing and for being lost. Expectedly, and infuriatingly, and _maddeningly,_ his pleas do not reach any ears. He runs, but his footsteps make no tracks, and he finds no one within his paltry range.

And a few moments later, when her consciousness fades, Emet-Selch’s form flickers out of existence.


	3. i fear the fall and where we'll land

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _We fight every night for something,  
>  But when the sun sets we're both the same:  
> Half in shadow,  
> Half burned in flame._
> 
> Three conversations long overdue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title: [Beautiful Crime — Tamer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKSip7nZBzw)

The Warrior of Light bolts upright, awaking with a start.

The pain is the first notable sensation: aching, deep-seated, like her bones had been hollowed out and filled with lead. Her head throbs in protest to the movement, to light entering irises, to existence as a whole. Hands fist in heavy flannel sheets, trying to brace against the sensation of being awake after all that had transpired, but even they ache with the strain of clenching. The room is cold, as well, which provides some strange comfort amidst all of this. Something grounding and real to distract her from Eorzea’s worst hangover. It all slams into her at once and she gasps a breath, reedy, choking on it.

_Weary wanderer — you’ve no fight left to fight! No life left to live!_

A body approaches her in a rush and she would be more defensive if not for her lungs trying to eject themselves from her body, if not for the pain rendering her sluggish, if not for the disorientation and unsteadiness holding her hostage. A warm hand smooths across her back and she manages to get the coughing fit under control enough to notice the man at the other end of it.

“Easy, now. You’re safe here,” Aymeric’s low voice rolls through her and she latches onto it, fixates on it in lieu of the full-bodied ache.

“Where…” she tries, but her voice is too rough to take the form of more than a whisper. A more careful scan of her surroundings places her in a cozy room, fireplace roaring on the opposite wall of the soft down bed. Out the window snow falls in a lazy waltz, dusting the bits of Ishgard’s familiar stone streets not already covered in white.

“You’re in Ishgard. I hope it is not too forward that you were brought to my home to heal.” Aymeric smiles, and it’s soft in a way that makes her warm. Safe. “It is good to see you again, my friend, though I find it troubling to see you under such circumstances.”

“I…” The syllable cracks, frail. She frowns and clears her throat. “I’m sorry, Aymeric. Sincerely. I’m quite embarrassed to find myself thanking you for saving me once again.”

“And once again, it is not I deserving of your thanks.” She tries and fails to mask her surprise as he continues. “It seems Estinien has a knack for finding you out of sorts. Full glad am I that he did — had he not, that storm may well have claimed you.”

She watches him for a few silent moments, trying to suss some hidden meaning where there is none. He’s not lying — there isn’t a reason for him to lie. Blue eyes scream sincerity and it’s a sight she sorely missed. “I’m even more embarrassed to admit that I…don’t remember much of anything that happened.”

He shifts in his seat. “The finer details elude me as well. Estinien excavated you from beneath several ilms of snow and carried you back here himself to receive treatment.” _Again._ She sighs, but apparently there is more story to tell. “He told me there were no tracks of which to speak, and nothing else around you for several hundred yalms. As if you simply appeared in the storm, from nowhere, and collapsed.”

She can’t meet his gaze, patient and earnest as it may be. So much for Eorzea’s indomitable hero.

“According to the chirurgeons, you suffered a bit of frostbite that was mostly treated, though the feeling in your hands may not return to what it once was. However, they seemed more concerned with the state of your aether.” She grimaces. “They surmised that, based on the state of your aether when you arrived, wherever you teleported from must have been some utterly incalculable distance away from where you landed.”

“Right…” The Warrior of Light finds herself at a loss for words. What could she say? What sort of explanation would soothe his boundless questions? 

She doesn’t find one before he speaks up again, hesitant. “I find myself ever concerned for your well-being, my friend. You look absolutely exhausted, even for someone of your fortitude. The chirurgeons reported that your aether was…strange. Or what little was left of it, anyway. And they didn’t know what to think of those scars.”

She looks down, nervous, wringing her hands. Soft cloth bandages wrap around them, partially covering the cracking scars left over from such a massive expulsion of Light, so white they nearly glow. A permanent physical reminder of what she did.

As if she needed one.

“…I never told you what happened. While I was away.”

 _Enter man and his indomitable spirit._ He _would haul the world back from the brink!_

“You seemed in a hurry when you returned. I did not want to pry.” A polite lie, but a lie nonetheless.

“When next I’m in Ishgard, let’s have a drink,” she says, pushing past the voice in her brain telling her to keep it to herself. It’s a response that seems to surprise Aymeric. “There is much I have to tell you, but… I’m afraid I must depart.”

The barest hint of a sigh seeps from Aymeric’s lungs, but he nods nonetheless. “Right. Of course. Though I do caution you to take care of yourself. For my sake and for yours.” He grins, melting the unease in the air. “As much faith as I have in Estinien, I’m not sure how many more miracles he is willing to perform before he decides you’re safer as a homebody than a hero.”

Somehow, a small smile finds its way to her face. “As if he could condemn me to such a fate. But I will be careful. I could never thank you enough for your hospitality and friendship.”

With a nod and a slight dusting of pink on the tips of his ears, Aymeric calls in a chirurgeon for one last examination of aether and her frostbite before her departure. They’re hesitant but they clear her for travel, so long as she wears gloves and does not tax herself overmuch with aetheric travel.

Heeding their warning, she dons her armor and makes for Mor Dhona by way of Coerthas. If she were not bound for the First, it would be a simple thing to teleport via aetheryte, but with her aether so fragile she finds it best not to take chances. She skirts carefully around Camp Dragonhead and the Observatory, mostly for fear of having to stop and socialize with Emmanellain and Honoroit. As much as she loves them and cherishes their company, she would make quite an awful guest with so much on her mind.

The ferryman greets her and agrees to carry her across to Syrcus Trench, where the massive stone pillars and choking fog greet her like a recurring nightmare, familiar and ominous.

Against her will she flashes back to sharp gravel digging into her knees and palms, of coughing blood and specks of brilliant white when she returned from the First after the dust settled. Her throat still aches at the memory. The aftereffects of almost becoming a sin eater, lingering like a bruise, ugly and splotching upon the surface of her soul in any and every world she traverses.

_Whether you will it or no, your mere existence will serve to engulf the world in Light._

The Warrior of Light takes a deep, shaking breath.

_Ahhh, the irony. What Vauthry achieved through bliss, you will achieve through despair._

The Ironworks Technologist is amicable enough, and takes very little in the way of convincing to reactivate the device and jettison the Warrior of Light back from whence she came.

The trip back is far less taxing on her than it had supposedly been when she travelled via aether teleportation, though her weaknesses still render her far frailer than she likes. Once her being materializes on the First she drops to a knee, gasping for breath stolen by the strain of travel. Her chest aches with the reflex to cough but she holds it back. She stares down at her feet and sees the crackling, marbled blue of the Ocular surrounding it, a color that simultaneously welcomes her with familiar warmth and makes tears prick at her tired eyes.

She startles once again at a soothing hand on her back, but relaxes when she sees the man behind it.

“It is good to see you, though I did not expect you back for some time,” G’raha says. Seeing his hood down is still a surprise, even now. “Are you alright?”

“I…” She frowns, making her way to her feet. It would be so easy to lie, to brush it off and return to her chambers, but what would that accomplish? “I don’t know how much of my folly on the Source you could see from here on the First.”

G’raha gives his most practiced placid smile, meant more to conceal than to comfort. “I know things have been hard on everyone. And especially you. You do not owe me an explanation.”

She scratches the back of her head. It’s an out, should she desire it, but her resolve is firm. Trying to run from this would have her running until her final days, and the Warrior of Light finds herself quite tired of running. “No, but… It might help me feel better?”

G’raha’s expression shifts to something more genuine, like that’s the answer he had hoped for. “Let us walk, then.”

They make their way out of the Crystarium and north past the Exarch Gate, finally out into Lakeland proper. Flowers bloom a soft and inescapable purple that reminds her so vividly of her time here, the beginning and the end and all the love and strife between. They meander past Fort Jobb and up the hill to skirt around the Laxan Loft, finding a small quiet cliff overlooking Radisca’s Round and the Forest of the Lost Shepherd. To their right, the lights from the Ostall Imperative and its great tower are a dazzling beacon. In the distance they spy the Thirstless Shore and The Source beyond that, harbor to Bismarck and all that lay beyond.

The journey is made in comfortable silence, but once they sit and look out to Lakeland before them, the Warrior of Light grows nervous.

“How much do you know of what happened on the Source since the Crystal Tower?”

G’raha takes a moment to compose his answer before he says, “Well, I know you did a great many deeds, and no doubt you saved countless lives, but… I apologize. I’ll admit the specifics are lost on me.” He pauses, looks to her with a hesitant smile she can’t return. “You could…give a brief summary? If you’d like to, of course.”

She doesn’t meet his eyes, gaze locked onto Bismarck where he rests in the waters beyond. “I lost. And I gained. And I lost what I gained. And…” A soft exhalation, as she remembers and remembers and _remembers._ “It was an endless cycle of having something and then that something being torn from my grasp. And even with how much I lost, and how much happened to me, and how much I suffered… It’s all dwarfed by this. By _him._ By what he did to me. What he said.”

“You pay too much credence to his words,” G’raha tries, but the dam cracks.

“Was he lying?!” She says, and it is perhaps too loud for the serene scenery surrounding them. A small flock of birds is startled into flight from a nearby tree. G’raha flinches in response and there’s an immediate wave of guilt, but it is overshadowed by a deluge of emotion. “Because I don’t think he was lying, G’raha. You do not base your core principles on something so frail as a lie — not with a conviction like his.”

_By your Twelve, boy, have I not told you before that everything I said was the truth?_

“I… I apologize. I merely meant… You listened to him perhaps too closely—”

“How can I not? He’s in my head!” She looks to him, sees the imposing glow of the Crystal Tower silhouetting him from behind. Silence weighs heavy between them, like the moments after a glass falls and shatters. “All the time. All the things he ever said to me bouncing between my ears. Like he belongs there.” She takes a shaking breath with the vague hope of composing herself. “I didn’t expect him to haunt me like this. I’ve killed so many people. Some without so much as blinking. But… But _him._ He’s the one I get stuck on. He was the founding father of the empire I have fought so long against, and ending his life is what throws mine into a downward spiral.”

G’raha grapples with his words for a moment, looking for the right thing to say. The Warrior of Light wonders for a moment if there is even such a thing. “Perhaps what he said was true, but… That doesn’t mean you need to wallow in it. What’s passed has passed. There are things we can focus on now that are less... _stressful_ , perhaps, than the past and what followed.”

“I just don’t know what to do. There’s nothing to fight. All we have is a — a _puzzle_ to somehow try to get my friends back home. And it’s not nearly enough to get my mind off him.”

“Well, you can…tell me more about what happened on the Source, if it’d help.” Unease hunches his shoulders, so scared of saying the wrong thing, as if it would make her think any less of him. After everything.

 _Yes, yes… And_ there _began our woes — with Hydaelyn’s blow, and all that it wrought._

Her face twists into a grimace, both at the voice in her head and the idea of recounting the gruesome details of the Bloody Banquet, the Dragonsong War, the conflict in Gyr Abania and Doma. “I don’t think it would.”

Sympathy presses his brows together and it makes her nauseous. “What would, then? You have helped me and mine so much. Let me help where I can.”

“I… I don’t know. I don’t know! Why can’t that be an acceptable answer?” She throws her hands into the air, shoulders heaving with frustrated breaths. “I’m always supposed to _know,_ I’m always supposed to be the one who has a plan, who — takes action! Who wins! But this— This doesn’t feel like winning. It feels like I’m drowning.” Her eyes catch on Bismarck again, holding there. “To my final resting place beneath the Tempest.”

“Amaurot.” The word is muddled in some unreadable emotion as he says it.

“Amaurot. Yes.” She blinks and behind her eyelids she sees its dazzling turquoise skies, its high spires, its opalescent architecture. Every bit as resplendent as her memories, though they’re not the memories she was supposed to recall so long ago. “You never got to see it.”

Now it is G’raha who cannot hold her gaze. “Not… Not as you did, no.”

“What happened to you down there?”

G’raha grimaces as he remembers. “A great many terrible things, to be sure. Many things I would not… I would prefer to…” He sighs. “I’m not comfortable…”

“It was beautiful.” She interrupts, and he looks to her once again in mild surprise. “Looking upon it was like nothing I had ever felt before. Its buildings and its landscape — even so far beneath the Tempest — it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And he made it! He just— He created it! Out of nothing but his own mind and aether!”

_And then there was Amaurot… Never was a city more magnificent. From the humblest streets to the highest spires, she fairly gleamed…_

G’raha is silent as he listens, somber. Past the frustration of not being able to articulate herself, she feels the roiling emotions and memories slowly start to organize themselves. “I went there. After. To…to grieve, I suppose. To maybe push past some of this fog that’s held me hostage. And… It’s just as beautiful as it was before. Perhaps more so. But knowing what we lost — what _he_ lost to get it — is… It’s too much.”

The Warrior of Light shakes her head, looking down at her hands where they wring themselves in her lap. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to dump all this on you, I’m just— I’m struggling to make sense of any of this. It’s frustrating. And… There’s not a lot of other people I can talk to about this.” The Scions, of course, deserve the truth, but bringing herself to open up to them is something she isn't quite ready to do. Not with all of this and more still churning through her mind.

“I’m honored that you would come to me with this, regardless of what meager help I can provide,” he says, and the smile on his lips is welcoming and genuine. “Please know you can speak with me any time. I always have an ear for you.”

She tries not to look so strained when she responds, “Right.”

G’raha is courteous as he escorts the Warrior of Light back to her room at The Pendants. They chat idly, much lighter conversation than before, and it calms her nerves somewhat. A dose of normalcy amidst the sorrow which plagues her.

But he leaves her to her evening alone, and a chilling silence appears to fill the space he leaves behind.

The door clicks shut as she enters the otherwise silent room. The bottles of alcohol are still strewn on the table and bile rises in her throat at the sight. The Warrior of Light has had several ideas in the past that had been less than optimal, but that…had perhaps been the worst. Shoulders slumped in shame, she stores them out of sight and out of mind.

Her gaze carries her to the window, where a fresh rain drizzles gently on a nightfallen Norvrandt. Something its people never thought they would see in their lifetimes nor any other. A miracle, wrought by her hand.

But it feels more like a curse than a miracle.

“Ardbert? Are…are you there?” She doesn’t know what compels her to talk to her old dear friend, but the words are out of her mouth faster than she can think to hold them back. She sighs when silence is her only answer. “I didn’t think so. It’s felt so different, ever since he…”

_‘Tis never easy to lose the ones we love._

She shakes her head. “Everything seemed so simple when you said it. You were always so honest. So _sure.”_ She glances back to the door, still shut and locked firm. “Gods, I probably sound so stupid. Talking to myself. Or, well…you. Shit.” She rubs her eyes, clears her throat. “I know you’re not here, but… Maybe it’ll help if I talk to you like you are.”

_Well, she is dead, isn’t she? Wishing it were otherwise will not make it so._

She steels herself, pushes the infernal lilting voice out of her mind, commits to whatever insanity has driven her to this point. “Honestly, I’m fucking terrified. Lost, like the floor has collapsed beneath my feet and I’m falling endlessly to some unknown fate that awaits me at the bottom. After everything I’ve done, everything I’ve been through…what a remarkable low I’ve hit.” She winces at the memories — Ultima, Lahabrea, Thordan, Nidhogg, Zenos — which come and go faster than she can hope to stop them. “This isn’t something I can just point my weapon at and make disappear. I can’t kill _the past.”_

_For our world… For our people… For all creation to be made whole again._

_Wouldn’t you do the same?_

“I-I’m afraid of what I know, and I’m even more afraid of what I don’t know.” She swallows hard, chest aching. “Of what _he_ knew. And— now I can’t get his voice out of my head. Gods… Look at me. I can’t even say his name.”

Fists clenched, she braces herself with a deep breath. _“Emet-Selch!”_ she shouts with the vain hope that no one is nearby to hear her. Her head hangs low and she shakes it, shoulders bunched and tense. The next word escapes from her lips in a whisper, or perhaps she shoves it out against her better judgment, two broken syllables from broken lungs:

_“Hades.”_

She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes, reveling in the stars that explode behind her eyelids. “I’ve tried smiling, and distracting, and pretending that everything is fine… And when _that_ didn’t work, I tried drinking, and moping, and wallowing in my grief.” The Coerthan chill has yet to expel itself from her bones, despite the temperate weather of Norvrandt. She looks down at her hands and finds cracks in brittle flesh, barely knitted back together by magic.

And the thrice damned scars, ever-glowing. She shoves aside the impulse to scratch them off, to rend her flesh raw in a vain attempt to remove the marks which brand her a failure.

“And when that didn’t work, I tried _talking_ about it! And— And I’m not sure that’s working either.” Her eyes drift down to her flowers, at their dancing petals that shake with each raindrop that falls. “Because the one person who might actually understand some piece of what I’m going through…had a hole in his chest before he scattered to the winds. One that _I_ put there.”

_You cannot be entrusted with our legacy._

Tears fall. Her hands tremble even as they ball into fists. The wounds there sting with the movement, a grounding pain. She blinks and sees the Light, sees the axe in her hand, sees the small smile on his face that will haunt her until she turns to dust.

_Remember._

“That was done by _my_ hand! I made that choice! And look where it got me. Talking to the ghost of a man thrice dead about a man who would have killed me had I not killed him.”

Searching eyes find the horizon, and something beyond. She wipes the tears from her cheeks and more fall to take their place. “And now his voice haunts me. I can’t escape him.” When her voice ekes out it’s frail, on the verge of collapse like the rest of her. “For as much as he resented me, he still wanted me to remember. But how could I forget?” A pause, a shaking breath, a glass teetering on the edge before it tips over and falls to pieces. “How did I forget?”

_Not that you would remember any of this._

“And— And he’s not even here to gloat! The Warrior of Light: brought low by a man who isn’t even alive to see it. I killed him. I _won!”_ Her voice breaks on the word, frail with the storm of emotions threatening to collapse her. “He was right — the victor shall write the tale, and…and the vanquished become its villain. But this… This doesn’t feel like a victory.” A memory slips quietly into her mind. A fight, an understanding, Ardbert’s determination to see his world saved no matter the cost. “Is this how you felt? Gods, I… You won too, didn’t you? And it cost you _everything.”_

 _And if_ you _had witnessed history unfold as_ I _have, you would reach the_ same _conclusion!_

She turns from the window and takes a sharp breath, more of a sob than anything, lacking all composure and poise and strength. The sound of shattered foundations, of resolve as it melts like snowflakes upon flushed skin.

“Everything… Everything he said and everything he did has been turned on its head.” She thinks to the Qitana Ravel, to the conversations in the Crystarium. It was never a secret, and she feels foolish for how little she considered it until now. “He… He was tempered! A-And I might be…” She swallows hard, closes her eyes. “He was tempered. I am not. I have agency. I am in control.”

_I will bring back our brethren. Our friends. Our loved ones. The world belongs to us and us alone._

She frowns, considering. “Us…” Her shoulders fall, and she finally understands why he slouched so.

Weary, she reaches out to shut the windows against the evening chill and the rain. The scars on her hands catch her eyes, glowing through the gaps in her gloves. Hesitantly, she peels them away, revealing both the remaining Light and the injuries left from the frostbite. She clenches her fists and the movement stretches her skin, stinging where the barely-healed wounds strain apart. She hadn’t stayed in Ishgard long enough for the chirurgeons to heal her fully, but perhaps with some of her own aether…

It's a problem she can solve, at the very least, a task to complete. It's _something._

The Warrior of Light pulls out her tome and sets it on the table, flipping through the pages. She shoves the stool to the side and stands instead of sitting, remaining on her feet at the behest of the restless energy keeping her from feeling at ease in any capacity. She holds her hands out above the runes and channels her aether into it, fingertips and palms glowing a faint green as the healing magic seeps beneath her skin. The Light in her scars seems to intensify, glowing brighter as if to reassert its presence beneath opposing aether. She doubles down.

She feels eyes on her back, ominous, watching her work. A familiar sort of feeling on the field of battle but never before has she felt it in such an innocuous place, and never before so pointed. So _close._

She turns and her eyes catch on a tall figure standing with its back leaning against the wall to the right of her open window. A tall, familiar figure. Her eyes widen as she takes in the sight of a man she thought long dead, a man slain by her own hands. It’s undoubtedly him: the crease in his distinct brow, the frown, the arms crossed over his chest. The clothes, the hair, the mere _presence_ of him is striking to a point that unnerves her. Even the gold of his eyes lit low by the lamps, two citrine gems.

A man she thought she’d never see again, though he haunts her mind ceaselessly.

She’s stunned speechless. Emet-Selch remains stationary until he realizes that she sees him — _truly_ sees him — and it visibly surprises him. He pushes off the wall and stands upright, arms falling to his sides as his frown turns to awe. He opens his mouth to say something but seems to be as much at a loss for words as she is.

The focus she had been exerting on her healing fizzles out, and the aether fades. As it does, so too does the image of Emet-Selch flicker out of existence, leaving the Warrior of Light dumbstruck, alone in the silence of her chambers once more.


	4. what time taught us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Nothing's as it seems, or what you thought it'd be._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title: [What Time Taught Us — The Dear Hunter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP9yq1L62I4)

Emet-Selch knows grief.

Intimately, thoroughly, vividly — he has experienced all its horrid shades. It consumes and engulfs and suffocates and  _ breaks _ . It  _ ruins _ everything it touches. It tears people asunder, unfalteringly and indiscriminately. In its inescapable grasp the mightiest of mortals crumble. Even the venerable Hades shattered so spectacularly beneath its weight, held together by puppet strings that whispered renaissance and restoration to all he held dear so many millennia ago.

Yet still beneath its weight, those puppet strings frayed and snapped.

This, he knows, is grief.

It hides in plain sight, though he knows the signs and how to find them. He sees it in the hunch of her shoulders, in the stained white of her limbal rings and faded gray of her irises, in her tears and hiccuped sobs as she tries and fails to stem the flood. Her rambling anecdotes drip with self-loathing and fear and uncertainty. Raw, aching  _ heartbreak _ . The word comes into his mind and it stings like a knife removed from a wound, left to fester and bleed dry. But it, like everything else, merely stacks more fuel atop her boundless sorrow.

Such sorrow that cannot help but burst forth in the privacy of her own chambers. How could he have been so  _ blind? _ Her quiet resilience was but a mask to hide the opposite — a facade for which he so readily fell. A dam of paper mache and woven candyfloss. Somehow meant to hold back lifetime upon lifetime of sorrow.

He bears witness to facets of her to which he by no means should be privy, though neither of them has much of a choice in the matter. The discomfort mounts higher and higher still as her rambling confession to an unknown other continues.  _ Ardbert, _ she had called them, and Emet-Selch struggles to see how he could have missed such an important figure in her life — unless, somehow, that was the point. Unless such a thing was not perceivable by even a man unsundered.

She picks apart her own methods of coping with rigor and severity and frustration as Emet-Selch examines her, truly searches her soul beyond the outskirts and beneath the surface. Before he had only allowed himself as much, only the barest of comprehension to further his goals, with the rest held at arm’s length and further still in fear of what he would find. But here in the face of such vulnerability, in light of his newfound clarity, considering all that had passed around— amidst—  _ between _ them, he looks.

And he  _ sees. _

It snaps to the forefront of his attention like it had been there all along — like all he needed to do to find it was look. Not so blatant as to be obvious but enough that Emet-Selch cannot deny it upon its registry in his conscious mind.

Bits of aether burst from her like flares of light, of  _ her _ hue. Undoubtedly familiar in a way he had only allowed himself to consider once, right before—

His death.

In synchrony, in a rhythm and time only the two of them could keep, her frustrations turn to him, to the ghost of his being— the memory of him which she was kind enough to keep.

_ Remember us, _ he had said, because he could not muster the strength to say what he truly thought:  _ remember me. _

“…Talking to the ghost of a man thrice dead about a man who would have killed me had I not killed him,” she finishes, and the fight bleeds from her like she’s been gutted. She’s right, and that realization elicits a similar response from him in turn. She searches the horizon outside her window for something but Emet-Selch can watch only her, her emotions as they shift upon her visage. She reaches up to wipe tears from her cheeks, but more follow in their wake. He stands leaning by the window, arms crossed over his chest, face fixed in a frown, and watches.

Silently, heavy with the burden of knowing, unseen and unfelt, Emet-Selch  _ watches. _

And, of course, he listens.

Each thought strikes like a physical blow as she voices them. Each rhetorical question, each carefully constructed idea that makes its way between her lips, hitting their mark with painful accuracy though she does not mean for them to do so. And  _ that _ leaves Emet-Selch with an ache far worse than any that her words alone could cause: that she divulges this all to a completely different person — a completely different ghost — not knowing that  _ he _ hears and understands with more clarity than he ever could have had in life.

Eventually, her resolve steels itself once more. She keeps her panic at bay with a few careful reminders: she is not tempered, she is in control. And though Emet-Selch knows not for himself the validity of such claims he sees how the understanding grounds her, forces her perspective back to the present. One long, thoughtful moment passes. She whispers a word, barely audible, but Emet-Selch never hears more. Instead she closes the window, though her eyes linger on her hands and their scars. Permanent reminders of what transpired, among the rest of the ways in which the deluge of Light changed her. But over the scars there are fresher wounds; she stretches her hands out and winces at the strain.

He watches her walk over to the table and begin reading through a tome, still standing as she holds her hands over the pages and channels her aether into it. Her hands glow green with the expenditure of aether, and her stains of Light seem to intensify as a result.

If she had had but the strength to hold it back, perhaps it would not have tainted her so…

But his mind cannot help but drift to the possibilities. What if she had turned in full? How else would her form have changed to fit such a vessel of light? Her eyes had turned a bright white, but would they have gone even further? Would her scales and skin turn marble to match the others of her kind? She would have been a Lightwarden to rule them all, he knows. A true monster, borne of instinct and power and none of the qualities that make her so capable and compassionate in her current form.

She has already been marred by the experience. It’s visible each time he sees her scales, her skin beneath the armor she bears, and the  _ eyes  _ most of all.

Eyes that now lock onto his.

Emet-Selch straightens, and processes — her eyes, her white-stained, haunting eyes bore into him. She sees him,  _ really _ sees him, and is frozen in place.

He steps forward, opens his mouth to speak, but what to say? All the time spent speaking to ears that couldn’t hear him, but now that he is  _ somehow _ able to be perceived, his thoughts escape him.

Time slows to a crawl. The aether quietly stitching her hands back together fades as she loses concentration on the spell. As it does her gaze loses its clarity and focus; instead of locked onto his eyes, it roams the space in which he stands, searching.

“Adia?”

She blinks. She rubs her eyes. She searches the area again, just to be sure.

She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes, shoulders hunched. “Gods, now I’m  _ seeing _ him,” she says, in no small amount of distress. “I’m truly losing my mind.”

Emet-Selch deflates.

* * *

She leaves the next day for the Source.

Emet-Selch, of course, follows.

_ Back to work, then. _

They distract her with trifling matters not worth Emet-Selch’s time or attention. When she returns to the First she is presented with yet more questions without answers, more hours spent thinking and researching and coming up empty-handed.

In her infinite kindness, she lends aid to a few of the Crystarium guards, though they find their target already felled. Emet-Selch would not usually lend his attention to such mundanity but their talk is of a Warrior of Light, of the horrible things wrought by their hands so many years ago. Such a notion disturbs her to an alarming degree and  _ that _ catches his attention even above the mention of history — the history of his colleagues long deceased, brought low by a few common sellswords. She spends hours troubled by the thought that the people of Norvrandt think the root cause of the flood is malicious somehow, a notion at which he cannot help but roll his eyes. The arbiters of the majority of their struggles are evil? Inconceivable, that.

But she takes it upon herself to right the wrong. As is her wont.

The Scions present her with the notion that the best way to change the public’s perception of the Warriors of Light is to tell the truth, from beginning to end, and hope to the gods they believe her. It’s a naive notion, as naive as her inability to accept their perceptions of historical events as they are, though she seemingly finds no better option. So long as it soothes the roiling sorrow within her, Emet-Selch supposes he can see no harm in such an act, regardless of the futility.

He does not expect to be so wrong.

The people gather before the Crystal Tower, and Emet-Selch stands among them in an attempt to see her as they do. Though small in stature, the authority she holds is palpable; the people grow silent and listen intently once she steps forward. Even her friends are entranced by her poise and speech.

Adia regales them with familiar tales— until the narrative shifts, and they no longer match those passed through the generations that the people have come to know. Five brave, kind adventurers who found a family with one another. Who became heroes through their merits and deeds, who wanted to save their damned world and found themselves well-enough equipped to do so. Heroes whose victories led the world closer and closer to defeat, until they gave their own lives to seek help elsewhere, that they might save their doomed shard. 

Bland, cliche. Emet-Selch does not resist the urge to roll his eyes at the notion.

Even she had thought them malicious at first, until she heard their story. Until she saw their conviction—  _ his _ conviction. Ardbert. And Emet-Selch straightens when he realizes who she had been talking to, who he had heard and glimpsed in those final horrible moments.

Another Warrior of Light. A piece of herself.

His mind churns angrily —  _ viscerally _ — at not having known nor having understood until she explained it. As if he was but another common oaf, a  _ child _ who could not deduce for himself instead of an emperor, an architect, a man unsundered.

She tells of how the others stemmed the flood with the help of the Word of the Mother, though Ardbert remained to linger upon the First. His role, apparently, was not yet complete. He did not know why until Adia arrived.

_ When all hangs in the balance, _ the Word of the Mother had told him,  _ you must give them hope. _

And he did. Even as Adia threatened to fall to the Light aether surging through her fragile form, even as she stood to fight Emet-Selch while her friends fell one after another, his hand and his light and his sacrifice unto her soul had been what gave her the strength to do what must be done.

To kill Emet-Selch.

The pieces fall squarely into place, once he realizes. The glimpse of her soul he had been forced to witness was merely her becoming more complete.  _ Rejoined. _

His mind wants to dwell but the white noise of excited conversations around him serves only to stoke his temper. The denizens of the Crystarium come to understand Adia’s words and how they relate to the world they thought they knew. She — by some absolute miracle — successfully turns the story they had known of the Warriors of Light into one of self-sacrifice, of perseverance, of hope and strength and a desire to right wrongs that transcends worlds. The people understand, above all, how wrong they were to curse the Warriors of Light, those who had given all they had and more to save the ones they left behind.

Emet-Selch watches as history changes before his very eyes. The victor rewrites the tale… 

Leaving the vanquished as its villain.

Emet-Selch studies her as she smiles, soul finding some modicum of peace at last, one ghost finally laid to rest. Until her eyes catch on something —  _ someone  _ — behind the crowd.

Her friends notice moments after she does, after her face pales and her breath stalls. Emet-Selch hears her ask if they can see him too, a curious notion until he considers what had transpired the night before.

He realizes then that she looks like she has seen a ghost. Another ghost, one not unlike Emet-Selch as he is now.

He feels his heart crack and splinter, knowing the people which still haunt her and the grief they carry.  _ Her _ grief. The burdens of those she has lost holding her prone like an anchor. And she had been faced with Emet-Selch’s own spectre only a night ago. But her eyes are not locked onto his as they had been last time. Who could she possibly see? Who could  _ they _ see?

The boy asks if she thinks it’s a ghost and Emet-Selch does not stifle his bitter laugh. If anyone would recognize a ghost, it’s her. She has had quite enough experience with apparitions.

Urianger confirms their suspicions. The crowd turns and notices him, and Emet-Selch turns to take him in as well: a man, brown hair and blue eyes, carrying an axe that he at once realizes is far too familiar. Instinctually, a hand rises to touch the point at which he had been shattered, where a single blow from a weapon of Light had torn him asunder.

The pallor to Adia’s face, the tremble to her hands, the horror — they are all much more understandable now that he  _ knows. _

He, and she, and all the other residents of the Crystarium look upon Ardbert, Warrior of Light of the First, Warrior of Darkness to the Source. A fragment of Adia’s soul, yet a person in his own right.

A person who smirks as he approaches, eyes locked onto hers.

“That it should be the Warrior of Darkness who brought the truth to light…” Ardbert says, and when Emet-Selch looks at her again she’s somehow even more horrified — to hear his voice aloud once more, to see him alongside so many others who can perceive him where before they could not. “You’ve saved me a fair bit of time — though I have a few words of my own to say, if I may.”

He extends his arms in a grand gesture, and though Emet-Selch does not know Ardbert beyond what he has been told and what he knows of his connection to Adia, it is…peculiar. Emet-Selch scrutinizes further, studies this being’s soul beyond the surface, and—

_ Oh. _

“People of the Crystarium!” he announces, “I am Ardbert, one of those you know as a Warrior of Light.”

The people murmur their confusion. Adia — the  _ true _ Warrior of Light — merely stares in shock.

“You should be dead!” someone exclaims.

“Aye,” Ardbert responds, “that I should. But as the world has been given new life, so too have I. I know not why I, and I alone, have been gifted this chance. But I do know this: only by the will of the star itself could such a miracle come to pass.”

The subtle sarcasm beneath his tone is not lost on Emet-Selch, and only lends credence to what — and to  _ whom _ — he saw lurking within that husk. How Elidibus crafted such an elaborate puppet in which he could walk and talk is a mystery, but the cruelty and cunning and precision of such an act hits its mark and then some. Emet-Selch looks to her and tears brim in her eyes, though the only expression she can make is one of shock.

“The hero who stands before you now — the Warrior of Darkness — is not of this world,” he continues, “And the day will come when she must return to her home. But this land is  _ our _ home. And if it is to remain so, now and forevermore, it is  _ we _ who must protect it. The time to rely on saviors from afar has passed. It is  _ you _ who must rise.  _ You _ who must become the new Warriors of Light!”

The crowd is rightfully shocked. Many wonder how they could possibly become Warriors of Light, to which of course this Ardbert has a well-crafted response. “None of us were born heroes, my friend,” he says. “I was only ever a man with a thirst for adventure. But wherever my journeys took me, I was invariably confronted with the same choice: to lend what aid I could to those in need — or not. And I always chose the former.” And while his words are likely factual, Emet-Selch’s skin crawls knowing how hollow they are, in truth. “Any one of you could do the same. All you need is the will to help your fellow man, and the resolve to see it through.”

Elidibus continues speaking with the people while Adia and her Scions converse in hushed tones. They all turn, and with one last lingering look over her shoulder, one filled with anxiety and confusion and all the thoughts muddling her brain, she heads for the Crystal Tower.

They talk in circles once safe within the Exarch’s Ocular, though they eventually land on the right answer: Elidibus. His motives remain unclear to them, though they know that as an Ascian his final goal must be the Rejoining. Yet even still, how those means lead to that end is far beyond them. Understandably so. The Emissary had always been fond of thinking far, far ahead of his adversaries, and as the final unsundered soul in this and any world, his efforts to rejoin the Source and its Shards must be redoubled.

Urianger seems to know this well. It merely serves to make their jobs much more difficult going forward: the delicate balance between preserving the understanding she has fostered in these people regarding their Warriors of Light, and eliminating the threat it poses with Elidibus as its new mouthpiece.

Adia sets off alongside Y’shtola to gather more information, more history that will lead to more understanding, but Emet-Selch knows it will not be enough for them to see the full scope of what time has wrought.

They walk in a near-palpable silence, ambient noises of the Rak’tika Greatwood serving as the only buffer to it. He walks alongside them unseen, watching Adia fidget with thoughts so clearly yearning to escape.

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

The question comes suddenly and Y’shtola huffs a startled laugh. “Like, bhoots? And spirits? We have fought those before, as I’m sure you remember.”

“No, ghosts as in… People who used to be alive. They don’t change, they’re just… I don’t know.” She frowns, struggles with the words.

“I… I believe I understand your meaning. I am not sure.” Y’shtola pauses to consider. Emet-Selch realizes the path they walk is familiar — one Adia and her companions had walked without Y’shtola so long ago. One he himself had walked. “The effects of people’s aether fade as their souls reenter the lifestream, to be recycled and reborn anew, but… Hm. I suppose if a portion of that aether lingers, so too could a fragment of that person’s soul. But could it take form on its own? Would that form look the same as it did in life? I’ll admit I haven’t thought about it much.” Y’shtola looks to her fellow Scion but she won’t return the gaze, keeping her eyes pinned to her feet as she walks. “Why do you ask?”

“I just…” She trails off but Y’shtola is patient as she pieces her thoughts together in a way that makes sense. “I don’t know. For a moment I thought I was seeing Ardbert — as before. That it was only me, and he was a ghost again… But that’s a silly notion, isn’t it? You said yourself that naught has changed with me. That he’s still…in here, I suppose.”

Y’shtola’s smile is warm as she turns it to Adia. “He is. And you can take comfort in that. I know it must be strenuous for such gruesome events to be brought back to the forefront of your attention thus, but I believe that soon our worries will be behind us.”   


Emet-Selch cannot be so sure.

“I’ve… Could it happen again?” she asks, quieter than before. Scared of the thought, of the words as she speaks them. “Could I be bound to another in that way?”

Y’shtola slows to a halt and Adia matches her stride. They stand beneath the trees, dappled with sunlight. Blind eyes turn to her as they study, and find…

“Ardbert’s situation was unique, considering his role as a shard of your soul. But… Curious. Would that Urianger could be here to confirm my suspicions. I could not say for certain, but…” She sighs. “I am unsure. Why do you ask me this? Are you being followed again?”

“Not… Not quite, but…” She sighs, frustrated, unable to parse her own experiences and what they truly meant for her. “Emet-Selch’s voice haunts me like nothing else. It’s driving me mad, to be honest. All the things he said and did… All the cruelty of his final moments, playing over and over again, showing me what I did wrong. Showing me how right he was. I wasn’t…” She clenches her fists, blinks away whatever tears were building in her eyes. “If I had been able to hold the Light, none of this would have had to happen. He could still be alive. I could have…”

Her thought never completes itself, though Y’shtola gives her ample time.

“You were not at fault,” she says.  _ “No one _ could bear host to that much aether and survive, and especially not such a sudden onset. It is not a sin to be incapable of achieving the impossible.”

“But if I  _ could _ have, then—” she starts, but thinks better of it. Instead she huffs a sigh, shakes the sorrow from her bones as if it were little more than winter’s chill. “It makes no matter. Come, then. I would see these ruins for myself.”

Y’shtola, after a troubled moment, follows.

* * *

They uncover more hints, more pieces of a puzzle constructed on a scale they could never conceive. Their cluelessness and the dramatic irony of the situation aggravates Emet-Selch to no end. He knows with pointed clarity that they will not truly understand until the full picture is explicitly presented before them — and in that moment, it will be too late. There will be naught else to do but clean up the mess their ignorance has left in its wake. They continue to make the right connections but their progress isn’t  _ enough _ to fix what will be done if they do not act.

And knowing Elidibus, knowing his methods and cunning and capabilities…

But does Emet-Selch care? He is —  _ was _ — an Ascian. Elidibus was his colleague, if not his comrade. One of the only people in existence who could possibly know the true scope of Emet-Selch’s suffering — what he lost, and what he could yet restore. The Emissary’s victory in this and many other battles of wits would spell victory for Zodiark, a world made whole once more. Such had been his only goal in the final months of his life.

So why does he find himself hoping  _ she _ prevails?

The conversation turns to  _ his _ final words then and Emet-Selch shifts uncomfortably. More pieces, but the picture  _ still  _ eludes them. They understand, finally, that their perceptions could not compare to his own, to  _ their _ own as they experienced the Final Days as it truly happened. They begin to understand the futility of their memory — and thus do they begin to understand its importance in  _ spite  _ of this futility. A delicate balance to strike, between remembering and knowing that they could not conceivably remember, not completely. Not like he did. They’re so close… 

But they take their leave of Tiuna’s tomb, and set off to scheme elsewhere.

Their next best plan has them luring Elidibus with another felled sin eater. They convene — all of the Scions, together once more — and so too does Ardbert’s body and its inhabitant, just as they had hoped.

The figure huffs a laugh as it approaches. “It seems I’ve lost this particular race.” They all turn to him, scrutinizing, but it is not in Elidibus’ nature to let merely being outnumbered stop him. “Ah, though I suppose it’s only fair. When we first met, it was I who outpaced you. Ravana, was it?” Factually, he is correct again, but the hollowness of his words betray him to those who knew Ardbert in his life.

To she who knew Ardbert above all others.

“But where are my manners?” he continues, “I wouldn’t be here were it not for you, and I have yet to say a word of thanks!”

Adia remains silent in response. Face pale as before, seeing the same ghost once more, but her fear is carefully concealed behind some manner of stoicism. Instead, she extends her fist towards him, an innocent gesture though the look in her eyes is pained, grave,  _ telling. _ This is a test, Emet-Selch realizes.

Her last hope that maybe by some miracle, her old friend has returned to her.

Elidibus fails spectacularly.

He stares at the fist in confusion for a few moments. It is precisely the reaction Emet-Selch would have, though he is not masquerading in the body of another. “Arm giving you trouble?” he asks, words dripping in false nonchalance, “You should have it examined.”

She retracts her fist and a fury replaces the sorrow upon her visage, a grave understanding. Hopes dashed to scatter as dead leaves on a strong breeze.

“I thought you were supposed to be good at this.” Her voice is on the verge of breaking but she maintains her resolve.

Ardbert’s body blinks once, slow, and when he speaks again his voice takes an alarming cadence. “Very well. Let us forgo this pretense. After all, it was never you that I needed to deceive.” Elidibus reaches up and reveals his mask, ruse shed at last. Adia is no less upset to look upon the truth. “It is I, Eldibus. Through your time in Emet-Selch’s imitation of our home, I daresay you have gained a better understanding of my role since last we met. Not that it matters.” 

The boy, Alphinaud, speaks up. “We understand your role, Emissary, but not your goal. What is it that you seek to achieve?”

Straightforward, as ever. Emet-Selch remembers his blunt naivety, his blind optimism. So young to see such horrors, to experience such strife, and yet maintain such an outlook.

“I seek to enact the will of the Convocation, of course,” Elidibus says, all-too glad to answer their questions which barely scratch the surface of what they would need to know in order to stop him. “If it helps you to think of me as but another Ascian, no different in nature or purpose from the rest, you are welcome to do so.”

“Once, I would have said your goal was destruction alone,” Alphinaud says. “Now I understand that you fight for something you love, just as we do. Yet though we seem doomed to clash, I bid you consider Emet-Selch’s final words.” They do not notice the tension in Adia’s jaw, at that. Emet-Selch does. “‘Remember that we once lived,’ he said. Had he not seen some glimmer of hope in our kind, I do not believe he would have spoken thus.”

_ A valid argument, _ Emet-Selch thinks.  _ A shame the boy does not realize that Elidibus harbored no particular fondness for me. _

“None better understood your plight than he,” Y’shtola adds. “His words must surely be worthy of your consideration.”

“Emet-Selch…” the figure says, head bowed, and it activates Emet-Selch’s fight or flight response in a way he thought he had lost so many lifetimes ago. Elidibus looks up slowly, deliberately, not in Emet-Selch’s direction but at— no,  _ through _ Adia. “How very unlike you, to err so gravely.”

Her face twists, then — something wretched and small and upset, an echo of her struggles through the days prior. It seems the idea that Emet-Selch’s last spark of hope for mankind was in the end a  _ mistake _ is unpalatable to she who would strive to find some ilm of common ground with even the most wretched of villains.

Even the most monstrous of men.

“That one should stray at the end of so onerous a path is understandable,” he continues, “but I had thought you above such weakness. Mayhap you thought the same.” Fear holds Emet-Selch hostage at the direct address, at the vulnerability of such a surgical examination of his character during his final moments. He is not seen or sensed, of that much he is confident, but his skin crawls nonetheless. “Would that I had been present to offer correction…”

Nausea builds at the thought of what manner of  _ correction _ the Emissary would have provided. As if the outcome would have changed even slightly if only for Elidibus’s careful guidance back to the path. But with his calculating mind, such a feat would be only a few short steps away…

What-ifs crowd his mind in the almost wistful silence that follows, before Elidibus speaks once more. “But I shall do so now, as is my duty, and return all to its proper course. As for you…” His faraway look sharpens to a grin as he addresses the Scions, smug with the satisfaction of being fifteen steps ahead of them all at any given moment. As if their attempts to thwart him are merely a jest — a child’s game.

“Look at yourselves. Look at your  _ history. _ Look back one hundred short years, to how your greatest warriors were undone. And now? At but a word from me, you raise your hands in answer like the puppets you are.” His face falls, solemn. “Naught has changed.”

Emet-Selch looks to Adia and finds fury, anguish, pain sewn into the lines of her expression. All understandable, and all striking him through the heart like— an axe.

Elidibus, on the other hand, scowls. “You fail and you fail and you learn nothing — allow that which is most important to slip through your fumbling fingers like so many grains of sand. Again and again and _again._ And you would remember _us?”_ Adia doesn’t quite conceal her flinch as he spits the final word: venomous, seething, horrible. “You do forget yourselves.”

They consider his words for a moment, Adia perhaps most of all. A memory surfaces in Emet-Selch’s mind: a fragment of their final confrontation before the fight, her last chance to end this strife.  _ Have you not learned that your ignorance and frailty beget only endless misery? _ he had asked, an utter fool, blind to the meaning of mortal misery for having spent so long immersed in his own eternal plight.

He had told them they could not be entrusted with their legacy.  _ His _ legacy.

_ Her— _

No. No matter. He is all-too late to finally discover just how grievously, horribly mistaken he was. Now, all that is left to him is to watch the aftermath of his failures.

_ His _ failures, he realizes, yet the consequences fall instead to Adia.

The corpse of Ardbert turns away from the Scions, away from Adia, away from the phantom of Emet-Selch. “There is no common ground to be found between you and I. Nor do I require any.”

Adia blinks towards the ground at her feet, head held low. Emet-Selch recounts all the times he had tried to broker peace, to prove his good faith. He remembers the olive branch as it had withered and died. By the time she had realized that peace was perhaps an option if only they had proven themselves, it had been too late. And though the peace would have been tainted — by Zodiark, by Hydaelyn, by perception and history and a profound lack of understanding — the course of history would have shifted, though in which direction, Emet-Selch could not possibly know. Would she still have claimed victory? Would he yet live? Would Elidibus even have considered such a notion? The possibilities tease his temper, turn him frustrated — at the world, at himself, at her. But in the end, it matters not. He can think himself in circles until a path bores through the ground beneath his feet but nothing will change what happened. He understands that now.

Adia understands this too, it seems. Now that she and the Scions find themselves faced with one less inclined to consider treatise… This stark of a change in tone towards a possible truce has Adia’s hands shaking where they’re balled into fists at her sides.

“I have my duty.” Without further comment, Elidibus steps forward to take his leave.

“Wait!” Y’shtola cries, but he pays her no heed. Elidibus disappears in a brief flash of dark aether.

The Rak’tika Greatwood is silent in his wake.

Adia’s face is unreadable even as her friends try to understand the gravity of what just transpired. Y’shotla’s blind gaze lingers on her, scrutinizing, but the points she makes are valid: they do not know enough. She believes the answers — or perhaps simply  _ any _ answers — lay in the Tempest, amidst the as yet untouched ruins of Emet-Selch’s forgotten city.

“If there’s aught to be learned, I want to know.” They are the first words Adia has spoken since Elidibus was still masquerading as Ardbert, and they are more certain than she has seemed since Emet-Selch still believed her largely unaffected by his death.

Emet-Selch refuses to dwell on how  _ that _ makes him feel.

Instead he prepares himself to return to his home once more, with Adia and with others, that they might grow even one shuffling step closer to being prepared for what machinations Elidibus has crafted to right Emet-Selch’s many, many wrongs.


	5. the terrifying rarity of truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I'll come back to haunt you,  
>  Memories will taunt you.  
> And I will try to love you—  
> It's not like I'm above you._
> 
> Seek, and ye shall find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title: [Haunt — Bastille](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZT6C2j_uS0)

They learn simultaneously too much and not enough from their time in the Anyder ruins.

Trekking through the unrestored bits of Amaurot is one thing, but learning anything from its hostile Ondo population and various accompanying monsters is another matter entirely. They had spotted various eccentricities, such as the channelling of aether into crystals to summon beasts, but it only confirms what they have surmised thus far regarding Amaurotine creation. Granted, they hadn’t truly understood the magnitude of this creation until they came to the end of their journey.

The massive chamber with its plethora of concept crystals, once cleared of its threats, had deigned to show them glimpses of the past, a _true_ vision of the world before it was sundered. The ancient figures had spoken of Hydaelyn and Zodiark, of summoning and sacrifices, of a defector and Elidibus and a being named Venat. This Venat and Elidibus, they discovered, acted as the heart of Hydaelyn and Zodiark respectively, and learning that fact tipped over the domino of several different worst-case scenarios all leaning towards the lot of them being unable to stop the last remaining unsundered Ascian and all his strength brought to bear. They were somewhat similar to the worst-case scenarios that had plagued her during Emet-Selch’s time as an antagonist, though arguably more brutal.

_Once upon a time. Yet here we find ourselves again. To look, learn, and remember…_

With Emet-Selch, there had been at least some faint hope of mercy. Some glimmer of a chance that this could be avoided in favor of peace and understanding, though that hope had been dashed once his bullet passed through G’raha’s chest. There had, at one point, been _something._ But left in his wake, there remains nothing but the brutal rage and clinical duty of an ancient being.

The heart of a god.

Upon their return to the Crystarium they had found chaos in the form of burgeoning heroes inspired in entirely the wrong ways by Adia’s speech. And it was not long before the sky opened its horrible maw, letting countless comets spill out and fire rain down — their third glimpse since Amaurot of the past as it was, yet this time by Elidibus’ own hand. It had granted these would-be adventurers what the Scions surmise is the Echo, that much is clear enough, but to what end? What benefit does that grant Elidibus other than disrupting the societal balance they’ve managed to achieve? More Warriors of Light to save the world? Though some threats yet remain to harry Norvrandt, they do not so much as approach comparable to the lightwardens in strength or lethality. On top of that, it cements Ardbert as one of the many, one of the new Warriors of Light he had so painstakingly planted within the ranks. A champion of this world once more. But, _again,_ to what end? Merely to designate those opposed to him as comparatively evil?

All this positioning, all the pieces comprising a puzzle on a scale they can’t begin to comprehend. Machinations whirring incessantly, moving around them as water flows so inevitably around stones in a river.

She cannot help but wonder what insights Emet-Selch would have offered were he still alive. What knowledge he could bequeath unto them. For all his secrets and plotting and ancient wisdom, he never hesitated to answer questions or make observations that would push them closer to understanding. For better or worse.

For all his malice, all his hatred and disappointment… In the end, he never lied.

Yet still, that staggering, inescapable uncertainty has countless unanswered questions settling at the base of Adia’s skull: the paltry knowledge they have been given versus how much they _don’t_ know, and what that could mean for both the First and the Source. They cannot possibly anticipate what comes next, and in turn they cannot take measures to prevent it.

But even with all of those problems on her mind, and as important as it should all be to her, Adia finds herself hopelessly distracted.

She had been able to _see_ Emet-Selch. And the more she dwells on it — the vision of him, the feel of his eyes on her back as she channeled aether, his expression as he took a step forward — the less convinced she is that she had been _imagining_ him at all.

And compounding Y’shtola’s musings on the possible existence of aether ghosts, it is no surprise the Garlean— the Ascian— the _man_ takes up more of her attention than she can afford right now. But…

Her preoccupation with Emet-Selch keeps her scattered. Ever since she had seen him, the look on his face has haunted her: so pained and so weary, yet stunned into disbelief when she had seen him. She had _seen_ him. That has to mean _something._ And so long as he occupies so much of her mind and her heart, she cannot hope to best Elidibus, nor the multitude of other foes who would cross swords with the Warrior of Light and of Darkness. For whatever worth those titles hold anymore.

_Fool. Who are you? No one. Nothing._

And so the night finds her poring over aetherology texts and old haphazard notes and whatever scraps of information she can find on the possibility of aether preservation with regards to souls. Unfortunately there exists scarce little in the way of examples or equations regarding immortal, unsundered souls, or what happens when a millennium’s worth of Dark aether meets a well of Light so vast it nearly engulfed the First entirely. Her situation had been — and still is — like none before, and likely will never be replicated on the same scale again. Even by her own hand.

With this in mind, she opens to a fresh page of her own tome and begins jotting notes by the light of her desk’s flickering candle, deep into the quiet night. She details the circumstances — in purely aetherical terms, of course, refusing to subject her research to the taint of her emotional turmoil. The before, the during, and the consequences of after. Nothing more. Once vaguely numerical values are attributed to the scope of what happened at the Dying Gasp (vague, because such amounts are practically unquantifiable, though she makes another note in another book to consider that further at some later date) she begins outlining the diagrams, the runes and spells that could give body to the ideas beginning to form.

She shouldn’t waste so much of her precious time with this farce. There are contingency plans to prepare, and mysteries to study that don’t revolve around a dead man. Instead she’s spending another night out of bed, chasing the coattails of another impossible task. Chasing closure.

She finds a few wayward notes from days past, specifically a diary entry detailing Alphinaud’s findings regarding the “true nature of ghosts,” as he had put it. It merely confirmed what she had already known: a soul composed of aether resides within each living being, and dissipates into the lifestream at the moment of death. Though he had made mention that a soul can remain in the corporeal realm by the will of its owner or through arcane methods, how could Emet-Selch have done such a thing after their battle? They had employed white auracite and summarily struck him down. She watched with her own eyes as he scattered to the wind, into nothingness, into oblivion.

Moreover, why would he stay? Was he truly that desperate to see his world restored?

An hour of reading and mumbling and scratching quill into parchment passes and nothing new enters her periphery, no antiquated theory that might hold the answer or ancient texts investigating scenarios in which aether _doesn’t_ return to the lifestream after death. She weighs herself down with the details and minutiae; yet another hour is lost to the thirteen-or-so pages torn out in an attempt to calculate this variable or that. It’s all speculation and it frays her at the edges, turns her chest into a wellspring of burning frustration.

_What a disappointment you turned out to be._

She sighs. The candle has dimmed to nearly nothing, almost completely spent. She closes and rubs her tired eyes and they burn as the strain tries to right itself.

“If I hadn’t lost my mind before, it is surely gone by now.”

Nothing answers her but a deep, yawning silence. Even the voice in her head has naught to say in response — no echo of conversations long past, no lilting, derisive cruelty. She turns and half expects to see Emet-Selch lingering by her window as before, but nothing greets her gaze save the slight glint of the stars outside her window, and the same quiet inn room that has played host to so much of her grief.

The stillness offers her a moment of clarity. She sits back in her chair and thumbs through her tome. Perhaps there is truly naught; perhaps her speculation is merely that and nothing more. A disappointing conclusion, to be sure, but it was foolish to expect any revelation to suddenly appear between two scarred hands as if it had been there all along.

Distracted, her eyes turn to those hands, recovering well from a few days of treatment but still not completely clear of scarring. Time passes both too quickly and too slowly as her brain shuffles through question after unanswered question, so fast and so muddled they start to blur into a distant haze. Elidibus, the Warriors of Light, Venat and Hydaelyn and Zodiark…

Emet-Selch.

_Hades._

A silent realization finds her like a tide’s recession before a mighty wave, like the hair-raising moments before lightning strikes, like the inevitability of a teetering glass to fall and shatter. She skims through to a different page and begins casting a spell— one simple enough to maintain without much effort, yet still drawing upon her aether to some degree.

That feeling, yet again, of _presence._ Though this time its gaze does not rest on her, as she talks herself in circles and grasps in the dark for answers where there are none, but—

The wave crashes. The lightning strikes. The glass shatters.

A voice fades in from the silence, like an orchestrion’s volume slowly raised.

“‘…was aetherically unmade. And yet I can still hear his words in my head just as he had spoken them, clear as if in answer to my musings. While this could be attributed to the stress and trauma of…’”

Adia glances to her left and sees—

She stands from her chair, knocking it over in the process, backing away from—

_He’s—_

The figure stands by her desk, hands clasped behind his back, bent slightly at the waist, reading from her notes aloud until he trails off, frozen like startled prey. Golden eyes blown wide, locked on her as she stands a few fulms away. Dressed in his Ascian robes, hood down, and bearing a torso that is surprisingly intact. Entirely opaque. As if he had been there the entire time. Reading as she wrote, watching as she worked.

A ghost to haunt her.

A beat passes. Two. They stare at each other in disbelief, halted amidst this brief moment in time. She waits for the illusion to dispel but it never does. Her spell persists idly. Emet-Selch does not fade as he had before.

Adia feels the breath leave her lungs in a shaky exhale.

“Adia…” he whispers after a pause, and _hearing_ him is a pain all its own. His voice, outside her head, more than mere echoes of the past. Another crack splits through the fragile remains of her foundation. He clears his throat, standing upright and turning to face her. “I owe you an explanation. Would that I had one.”

She stays quiet for a long moment as she convinces her brain to accept what its senses perceive.

“For what it’s worth, you are not hallucinating,” he continues. “Nor am I. For a long time, I thought that perhaps I was. And then I thought _you_ were. But the longer I lingered, the more convinced I became that maybe this wasn’t some…purgatorial nightmare after all. And then you saw me, and the reality of _that_ could not possibly be denied.”

She opens her mouth, closes it silently. Her stance relaxes into something less apprehensive by ilms, and the roiling between her ears tries to calm itself. When she finally speaks, it’s measured and careful, slow for fear of losing her nerve to hysteria.

“For all the…imaginary arguments I had with you in my head, and all the awful things I told myself I’d say if I ever saw you again… I am at a loss for words.” Emet-Selch exhales and his shoulders drop with the motion, a small concession of defeat. She holds the tears at bay, the panic settling low in her chest at trauma unearthed. “How long?”

He lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “I have not been here the entire time, but near enough. My earliest memory since my death is watching you fight those primals you conjured in the Empty. And the morning of that day.”

She blinks as the weight of several different realizations settles upon her. The breakdown, the trip back to Amaurot, the collapse in Coerthas, the conversations…the speech, and Elidibus, and the Warriors of Light, and—

“You saw everything.” She’s breathless, and it pains her to hear. This is no time for weakness.

He smiles that same, sad smile he had worn at the Dying Gasp. “For better and for worse.”

Adia gives him a few more seconds to disappear, a few more seconds before she’s convinced of reality and has to look away from him for fear of breaking any further. “How are you still— Gods, you… You should be dead. I _destroyed_ you—”

“Indeed you did. ‘Aetherically unmade,’ just as you wrote,” he says. “Yet here I am.”

Several cacophonous emotions crash into her at once. The heat of her temper wins out. “I don’t know what kind of sick scheme you’re plotting—”

“There is no _scheme.”_ His interruption is abrupt and unforgiving, and Adia flinches in response. “No _plot._ And if there is, it is not by my design.”

 _Every hour of every day,_ he had said. Adia hears it so clearly in her mind. But what plots could he cultivate in oblivion? What could he do but watch?

But even above all of that, she knows he would not lie.

A tense moment of silence passes before he elaborates. “I died. ‘Twas not an Ascian death from which I would inevitably return; I have experienced enough of those to know the difference. I died a _true_ death. All I knew was a brief void of absolute nothingness. And then eventually, inexplicably, I woke up to a world in which no one could see or hear or feel my presence.” He frowns but refuses to look away from her, even for a moment. “No matter how hard I tried.”

She doesn’t look away, though she wants to. Not now that she can finally see _him_ in return. Gods, how long had he languished in that imperceptible nonexistence, unable to affect the world around him? How much had he said or done to blind eyes and deaf ears?

“Why stay here then?”

He scoffs. “I am _your_ ghost, after all. Who else would I haunt?” Adia’s face must twist involuntarily at that, because his expression shifts to something unreadable. “Believe me, I’ve tried. I have been tethered to you like a leashed mutt. I am not clinging to life, dear hero, I am _shackled_ to it.”

“But…” Her brow furrows. “That doesn’t make any sense, Ardbert could roam the entirety of the First, he wasn’t…” Another swell of questions rises in her mind and she goes silent as she contemplates them. Just how different is this situation from Ardbert’s? Why does it require aether expenditure to perceive him? Why him? Why _her?_

A long silence stretches between them as thoughts roil and churn. She grasps for answers that aren’t there and there is a sensation of freefall as she confronts the vastness of what she does not know.

“The vaunted hero of the Source and the First,” he muses, stepping closer. Each footfall is like a gunshot in the otherwise silent room. He stops before her, ilms away. Close enough to touch, if the desire should strike him. “Oh, I may have died, but you _shattered.”_

She regards him unflinchingly, resolute. In spite of her tempestuous emotions, or perhaps because of them. “I am still whole, Emet-Selch. Do not mistake me. I am still here.”

They regard each other for a moment that hangs suspended in time. Hero, and villain. Victor, and vanquished.

His hand raises, reaching towards her, hesitant as if she would disappear if he moved too suddenly. As if _she_ were the ghost, the shadow suspended upon dust. She does not move and she does not look away, even as his hand reaches closer to her cheek—

A knock at her door startles them both out of their shared standstill. In a panic she breaks the ongoing spell, and Emet-Selch opens his mouth to speak before his form disappears, leaving her functionally alone. Part of her, the part that still wrestles to understand, provides a constant reminder that though he cannot be seen or heard, he can _see_ and _hear._ A terrifying thought. What else had he seen and heard? How much of it does he remember?

She shakes the thought and opens the door to reveal Glynard, and behind him is—

“Cyella?”

Glynard takes that as acknowledgement enough and leaves them to their business. Cyella murmurs a quiet greeting before entering Adia’s chambers.

She walks over to the window and throws it open to let moonlight spill forth as Adia closes the door. It bleeds into the room, painting her in a silver light, and Adia cannot help but remember their last fateful meeting beneath these same stars, this same light, before they had gone their separate ways. Her shadow stretches across to nearly cover Adia in its darkness.

“I was in the Exedra,” she says, “I saw everything. That was Ardbert…and it was not. Twice now he has appeared, calling the people to arms. Speaking of _heroes.”_

Adia’s expression sets itself into a frown, and she explains what precious little she knows of her old friend’s vessel and its occupant. Cyella crosses her arms over her chest as she listens, frowning.

“I knew this day might come,” she says after a pause. “Ardbert never did reappear as a Virtue. But to see his flesh stolen by the selfsame Ascian that made mock of their sacrifice…” Her face twists with her rage, and Adia cannot help but match it in her heart. A solemn understanding: Elidibus’ presence in Ardbert’s body is not only terrifying for his recognizability as a Warrior of Light. It is a knife slipped between two pieces of plate armor, and yet further between two ribs, to nestle into her heart. A wound where she is most vulnerable.

“I spent years searching for a means to redeem their legacy,” Cyella continues. _“His_ legacy. And in you, I found it. You slew the Virtues, reclaimed the stars… You spoke the truth, and the people listened. When I heard our patrons speak of how the Warriors of Light had been their saviors all along, I thought at last, _at long last…”_

They share a look. Cyella’s face drops, troubled. “I was a fool.” Adia frowns, knowing full well that she had been just as foolish. If not more so.

Cyella walks away from the window, towards Adia. The shadow no longer eclipses her; the Warrior of Light now stands fully beneath the glow of the moon and stars, celestial objects inhabiting a sky she herself had reclaimed.

“I cannot ask more of you, not after what you’ve given. But I must.” Cyella looks down, one hand held over her heart, knowing full well the gravity of what she asks. “Set him free. Lay him to rest with the others, in honor and triumph.”

Tears brim at the edges of Adia’s vision. Fearing the weakness of her own voice, she merely nods. A confirmation and a promise.

No further words pass between them. Cyella makes her way out of the chamber and shuts the door behind her, leaving Adia alone once more in the Pendants.

But she knows she is _not_ alone. Not truly.

She does not speak, she does not regard the presence she knows lurks somewhere in the room, unseen and unheard. Instead she approaches the open window, feels the night’s breeze caress her skin. That moonlight cascades over _her_ form now; no longer does she stand in shadow. Her eyes close, and she takes a breath to compose herself. When she opens them again it is with resolve and with purpose. With clarity and with focus.

With the harrowing understanding of the challenge ahead, and the unknowable consequences that await should she fail to rise and meet it.

Adia crosses the room and closes the book still lying open on the desk, before stowing it safely in her bag alongside a few others. With that in hand and a hardened heart besides, she departs, leaving the inn quarters and all the helplessness and sorrow which cling to its walls.

There is work to be done.


	6. i loved, i loved, i lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _How can I say this without breaking?_   
>  _How can I say this without taking over?_   
>  _How can I put it down into words when it's almost too much for my soul alone?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title: Hurts Like Hell — Fleurie
> 
> sorry this took literally forever i forgot how to write entirely

Days pass like years before she deigns to perceive him again.

Much of the time she spends busying herself with various tasks. Monsters to slay, odd jobs and favors as befit only the Warrior of Light, helping any and all who ask. An attempt to distract herself, to be sure, but for how long? And to what end? Simply ignoring her problems will not make them disappear, no matter how she tries, no matter how imperceptible he is without her active efforts.

Though the aether she uses to fight seems to flicker him into existence just enough to distract her…she repositions to put him out of her line of sight, each and every time. They are the only times she sees him; unsurprisingly, she does not yet seek him out again with purpose as she had that night.

It is _horribly_ familiar.

And familiar in a way he could not name until he had been freed of Zodiark’s influence. He had held her just out of Emet-Selch’s reach, just out of his understanding. Close enough that he remembered her in simple, unemotional terms, but far enough removed that he could not see what was in front of him.

Emet-Selch lets the frustration of her cold shoulder consume him, at first. The _gall_ of her to finally know of his existence, to be sure she had seen him, only to ignore him outright. Selectively. Purposely! For her to _choose_ to seal his presence away when she knows she has the power to speak with him… It stings like nothing else.

The anger boils in his chest but he refuses to speak of it out loud. Even with the knowledge that he would be his only audience, the simple notion of manifesting these thoughts, of giving them purchase in the air, sours the words on his tongue before he speaks them. The emotions build but he keeps them trapped to fester as he seethes in silence, but without an escape, without means to distract himself from them, they become impossible to contain.

Three nights after she learns of his presence, she falls asleep and his unspoken tirade pours forth like a burst dam. He shouts his throat raw, curse after curse, an onslaught of anger until the exhaustion of his fury robs him of his words and thoughts—

And yet she sleeps soundly, wrapped within the dark embrace of midnight in a silent room.

Almost immediately he is struck with the futility of his anger. He cannot fault her for needing time to process the idea that the ghost of the man she killed — an event that she seemingly has not yet been able to process on its own — is now following her at all hours.

Venting his frustrations eases the tension somewhat but the fact remains: despite finally discovering the certainty of his existence, she ignores him. When she does chance to see him, it takes her aback — yet _still_ she pushes it out of her mind, positions it out of her sight, and refuses to acknowledge him in any substantial way.

Perhaps she truly has nothing to say to him. Part of him knows that to be false, and that she likely bursts at the seams with questions (most of which he would know the answer to, though there are likely several he would not) but despite the sting of anger and bitter abandonment, he cannot quite blame her. Within the span of a night she had learned that Emet-Selch is still alive, in some form — after all the physical and emotional strife she had endured to ensure the opposite — and above that, he is stuck to her like a parasite.

So once the anger abates, he resigns himself to a quiet, tired understanding. She needs time, and space, and he can give her both. He _will_ give her both, whether he wills it or no, until she decides she is ready. Until she decides that _he_ has suffered enough.

If she decides as much at all.

It is difficult after that night to let things return to what semblance of normal Emet-Selch had fashioned in this purgatory. Reading over Adia’s shoulder holds little joy, rare as it becomes in light of her desire to work out her frustrations through fights or manual labor instead of research. She reads little and writes far less, and when she does decide to research she is selective about her material with the knowledge that someone unseen and unheard is reading over her shoulder, watching her every move. And that awareness, the knowledge of his constant presence, alters her behavior in a way that does not allow him such indulgence anymore.

Speaking his thoughts and musings aloud falls equally flat after that night, as well, but he returns to that habit in time. He avoids it while she uses aether that would reveal his presence but he is not perfect. The times he does talk through her aether use, the times when he flickers into her perception and she hears him…

He does not let himself dwell upon the turbulent look in her eyes as she is reminded of Emet-Selch outside the confines of her own head.

But, his seclusion does not last as long as it had before.

He comes to this realization the evening following a day of assisting Chai-Nuzz in testing the durability of a prototype Talos model — in perhaps the most _infuriatingly_ rudimentary method imaginable. He’s an hour into a solitary ranting monologue debating the fundamentals of gunblade combat and the more efficient ways it can be used to test the mettle of a Talos when he realizes that Adia stands across from him in her chambers, watching silently as the faint glow of a spell surrounds her.

Emet-Selch clears his throat, and regards her.

“Well?”

It is not in reference to his lecture and she is keen enough to know this. She blinks, and sighs.

“Well.” He watches her resolve temper itself, and she meets his eyes. Their stark white limbal rings nearly have their own glow around the dull blue of her irises, and they are more pronounced now than ever. A stark reminder to all of what she endured to get here. “I’m sorry. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to process what’s happening, and I’ve come to realize that… You are not the only ghost haunting me.”

Emet-Selch’s eyebrows raise just slightly, but he holds his silence in favor of hearing the rest of her piece. “You’re perhaps the most _tangible_ of them, but… Hearing you outside of my head and _seeing_ you again made me realize that I am followed by _all_ the people I’ve lost. I always have been, but I was afraid to consider them. All the people who have given their lives in my name, all of the people I couldn’t save, all the people who have died because I failed them— and _you,_ most of all. In what may have been my greatest failure.”

The understanding that she perceives his ultimate fate as a _failure_ on her part hits harder than he could have anticipated. That she holds him in the same regard as friends and loved ones lost— that _he_ is as much as friend, or—

“It was something I was forced to confront when I realized that what I was experiencing — and perhaps am still experiencing — was grief. For those I have lost.” She swallows hard past the tightness in her chest. “And in realizing that, I came just a little closer to understanding what you went through.”

 _When will she realize that my loss was her own?_ he thinks, but holds his tongue.

“I know I’ll never understand loss on a scale as monumental as yours, but… I know that you were grieving, and I failed you.”

_When will she realize that my greatest loss was losing her?_

“I don’t have any answers. I-I don’t even know where to begin! But— I’m done trying to run away from this. I _can’t_ run away from this.” She deflates, just slightly, as the weighty burden of duty settles across her shoulders once more. “But before any of that, I have to save the First. I have to stop whatever Elidibus has planned.”

“Just as you stopped me.”

This throws her. Another cruel understanding, then: that Elidibus and Emet-Selch may not have worked for the same reasons, but they served the same master to the same ends. Emet-Selch’s Amaurot belonged to Elidibus as well. And like the Ascians before him and those who will inevitably follow in their footsteps, they are mortal. They walked upon the soil as she did, they saw the same sunrise and sunset.

And they die. Just as Emet-Selch had, and just as Elidibus will.

“That doesn’t change anything,” she says after a moment. “I have to stop him, just as I had to stop you, yes. This may not be your Amaurot but the First is— this is Ryne’s home! It’s Gaia’s home! And Chai-Nuzz and Dulia-Chai! It was Tesleen’s home and it’s Seto’s home and it became _my_ home when I needed it. And that might not make a difference to you, or to Elidibus, but it matters to me. I will strive to keep what we have now in favor of restoring what was lost. It doesn’t change _anything.”_

“Will it change how you feel once the deed is done?”

That stuns her yet further as she weighs the thoughts in her mind, as she considers for the first time that Elidibus may be as worthy of her sympathy as Emet-Selch had been.

“Ask me again when we get there.”

* * *

The remainder of that evening is spent detailing the specifics of Emet-Selch’s current condition. He divulges what he knows (relatively little) and she notes it carefully, alongside other observations and what few tests can be performed in the confines of her room. The minutiae of her aetherology formulations bores him but after a few muttering moments, she constructs a spell solely for the purposes of rendering Emet-Selch visible, and implements use of it.

They narrow down the exact distance he can be from her and at her insistence, Emet-Selch tries to push the boundaries but finds himself incapable, at least in his current state. As they work she notes the little details, such as his form maintaining a constant amount of relative corporeality no matter how far he strays from the locus of her aether usage. She has him attempt to interact with several different objects as she expends varying amounts of aether, but Emet-Selch remains unable to exert any significant force upon the world around him. 

She urges him to attempt to use aether while visible instead, a request that Emet-Selch is surprised to find feels vastly different than doing so had felt in life. It strains his focus to fraying and takes most of his strength — and _hers,_ much to their shock. He can do little more than form a spark of aether in his hands before she urges him to stop, a fresh tension furrowing her brow that suggests his aether use taxes hers as well — though he hears no such complaint from her lips, of course.

Emet-Selch knows better than to expect any protestation from her, even if at the cost of her own health.

Eventually she grows tired of her testing and her research, and provides little resistance when he suggests sleep. The morning soon follows and there is yet still no shortage of people who wish to express gratitude to the Warrior of Darkness for her service to their world. The first of these is Moren, the keeper of the Cabinet of Curiosity and Adia’s primary resource for researching most anything on the First, who finds her as she exits the Pendants. He expresses his thanks, as they all do, for shedding light upon the story of the old Warriors of Light. For revealing the truth, where it had been distorted and malformed by time.

She visibly tenses at the mention of Ardbert, a reaction that does not seem to catch his attention, though he perks up when she takes him up on his offer and asks about the Warriors of Light, and heads off to find some tome or another back in his Cabinet.

“No rest for the righteous, it seems,” the manager of suites offers as she turns to take her leave as well, and the lad has never been more correct in his life.

For even as the sun sets in one place, it rises in another.

Adia is met in the Cabinet by the twins and Ryne, and they all gather around a cozily lit table to hear the tale of the Warriors of Light, before Ardbert and his friends took up the mantle. He lists several historical names, both familiar and foreign to them, and that they were not only assigned that moniker by the people they protected, but they bore the name for themselves as well. Alisaie makes mention of the negative and positive connotations of the term — Moren explains that as the Light gained prominence, it was instead met with fear, and the title morphed with the aetheric landscape.

But then he plucks one tome from the stack and turns it to a page bearing an illustration: a warrior, clad in armor and a horned helm, bearing a sword before a great sun. The first Warrior of Light, in all his glory. Those who followed in his wake shared the title as they fought for righteousness, for the people, for good.

Alphinaud comments on the use of the name upon the Source, as well, a notion that surely has not escaped Adia’s notice. The question is not the connection itself but rather what it means — for the First, for the Source, and for her.

As is customary, they talk themselves in circles about the problem but come to no conclusion, nor are they able to formulate any concrete plans as to what they can do with the information. It is the part of their deliberation he had enjoyed the most as he lived because he had some modicum of knowledge about the situation. Here, however, while he knows with _relative_ certainty what will come to pass, what Elidibus may have planned in Emet-Selch’s wake… 

Well. Everything in its time.

Alisaie comments on the connotations between _light_ and _Hydaelyn_ and _good_ and it hits more of a mark than the girl could ever know. If Emet-Selch and the other Ascians had ever been bitter, it was for that reason first and foremost. After everything they had suffered at the hands of Hydaelyn, after they had lost _everything_ to her mighty blow… Adding insult to injury is a vast understatement.

A gaggle of children come running at whispers of the Warriors of Light, and once they find the Warrior of _Darkness_ instead, they gawk without much subtlety. Adia smiles and obliges them, of course, and when the littlest of them asks what she can do to become a hero, with those massive blue eyes looking up so expectantly…

Adia seems at an utter loss.

The girl seems keen on becoming a healer, though, a fact which renders Adia’s heart soft and pliable enough to escort her and the rest of the children (Scions included) to Chessamile in Spagyrics — under the guise of a race, of course. For she was ever a child at heart.

Chessamile assigns chores to them all once they arrive, and without anything else demanding their attention, they all decide to assist where they can. After a brief visit to a vineyard and a small detour to Lakeland for a competitive bout of monster-slaying, the lot of them return to the Crystarium, though following a somber conversation with Alisaie, Adia first takes a brief detour to a secluded overlook on the outskirts of the city for reasons unknown to Emet-Selch. Though he must admit, once they arrive, it is beautiful: the lavender treetops and fields as they peek over the ridge separating the Crystarium from Lakeland proper, the boundless and cloudless skies, the distant Laxan Loft upon its perch…

It is almost enough to distract from the footsteps approaching from behind. Adia turns to see Ardbert — who seems surprised in turn to see _her_ standing there.

“Why am I…? Was it you who called me here?” he asks her fury with a confusion Emet-Selch has never seen from the emissary before.

A brief moment of pain takes her as she seemingly observes a vision of Elidibus’ past. Emet-Selch can only wonder what she had seen as Elidibus continues, “So you peered into my memories… No matter. You will have found little of import. But I see you intended to summon me here no more than I intended to come. The fault is mine. Such is the burden of hope…”

Emet-Selch’s face twists. Adia knows perhaps best of all the burden of hope, the burden she carries by mere virtue of her station and character.

“Why must you embroil the people in your plans?” she asks, ever concerned for the well-being of those she protects.

“I merely avail myself of such tools as I require for the conflict to come,” he responds, and the notion that the people for whom she cares are merely _tools_ sets her blood alight. “That which I do is no different from that which you have done so many times, Warrior of Darkness. I arm myself. I hone my skills. I make ready to vanquish my enemy— you. You who have murdered my brothers — who have taken their selfless labors in service to the one true world and turned them to ash.”

This must sting her most of all, for all she has languished over what she did to Emet-Selch. The grief and turmoil he has seen firsthand… It is clear to him — and perhaps to him alone — how she suffers the consequences of her actions, no matter how necessary they may have been in her eyes.

“I see you for what you are. You are death, and only in death shall you serve any purpose.”

She hears this with a hardened gaze but he sees through it to the truth: to her pain, to her resignation, to her doubt and her fear. Elidibus could not be more wrong — if only Emet-Selch could convince _her_ of that notion as well.

“The Convocation charged me to steer mankind and the very star upon their true course. As Elidibus, it is my duty. And I shall see it done.” Emet-Selch feels his heart twist at the sight of his old friend, his colleague, malformed by the weight of his duty borne for so, so long. “I will strike you down… Destroy you body and soul. All else must wait.”

Emet-Selch looks to Adia, expecting a retort, any words in her defense… But nothing. Just a clenched jaw, and the horrible realization that one way or another — with or without understanding one another — this will end.

“Ere long I will come for you, Warrior of Darkness. And I will save the world.” With that Elidibus turns to take his leave, but the emissary hesitates. “One last matter. I bore witness to your final struggle with Emet-Selch.”

Adia visibly tenses at that, no doubt dredging the memories and all the roiling emotions in turn. “It seemed as if he saw something familiar in you. As if he mistook you for another.”

She deigns to respond to this, to Emet-Selch’s surprise, as she says, “Hythlodaeus called me his ‘old new friend.’”

It’s an observation that strikes Emet-Selch where he is most vulnerable, and he is quite relieved to know that no one can see him. He knows there had been a chance for her to have talked to Hythlodaeus in her time in Amaurot, but… It is too much.

“…No. I recall not of whom he spoke. Mayhap I never knew you. Or mayhap it is another fragment lost.”

Adia opens her mouth to speak but—

“Ah, I wasn’t aware you already had a guest. If the conversation is constructive, I shall not intrude,” a voice sounds from behind Elidibus. They both look to see the Crystal Exarch approach — unhooded, calm, his words a promise and a threat in one. “But if you seek to stir up trouble, Elidibus, then I must insist you leave at once.”

Silently, Elidibus walks towards the stairs but as he passes he lances the Exarch with a blast of dark aether. Not enough to hurt him, but enough to test his strength — and to send Adia into a panic, if her quiet gasp is any indication.

“Though you lack Her blessing, your soul is surprisingly dense… Hmph.” Without further comment, Elidibus disappears into a rift, leaving the Exarch and the Warrior of Darkness alone atop the overlook.

Adia approaches and is relieved to see the Exarch unharmed, but she looks with obvious concern at the growing — and now _glowing_ — crystal that consumes most of his left arm now as well as his right.

“Oh, this… This is my own doing — the consequence of my recent exertions. It is the tower’s way of compensating me for the demands I have placed on it. Rest assured, it is no great inconvenience at present. Indeed, I told Beq Lugg as much…but they would not be persuaded, and sent me away to rest.”

Adia’s brow furrows in concern, but he is quick to wave off her concern with a smile. “No need to make a fuss. Strange as it may sound, I consider it something of a badge of honor. One of the brave sounds who saw me delivered unto the First once said that the world shall ever have a place for tales of heroism, so long as we have need of inspiration in our lives. Though he and his fellows had no way of knowing whether their mad scheme would amount to anything, they knew that the attempt alone would inspire hope. Or so they hoped.”

The Exarch smiles, wistful. “A more optimistic lot, one would be hard-pressed to find. They said they would find a means to save our godsforsaken world — just as soon as they had sent me on my way. Said it with such confidence that, for a fleeting moment, I half-believed them. Such faith, such courage in the face of unrelenting despair. For a long time, it was more than I could bear to remember them. But having come this far — having sent full many on their way myself — I see things more clearly.”

Adia watches him quietly, as he watches the Crystal Tower. “To take action is to hope. To believe — to _choose_ to believe is to take the first step towards a brighter future.”

Emet-Selch lets himself laugh aloud. She, of all people, would know of hope.

“And why do I tell you this?” he asks, turning his gaze to Adia. “Because I want you to indulge me in a little recklessness. Needless to say, I have a plan. And…when all is said and done, I will ask yet another favor of you.”

Adia smiles, and opens her mouth to speak, but quick footsteps up the stairs interrupt her as Ryne approaches with harrowing news. They make their hastened way to Spagyrics — only to find Thancred abed, pallid and weak, seemingly having endured the same _dizzy spell_ that Alisaie had back in Lakeland.

Thancred says it’s been more of a trend than he would like to admit, and Adia listens as her worst fears are realized: the Scions’ connections to their bodies back on the Source are growing frail, and they have little and less time before this split becomes irreversible, or worse. The Exarch bids Adia return to the Source to check on the bodies, and she is quick to agree. She leaves Spagyrics and when she channels aether to teleport, she spares one troubled glance to Emet-Selch, before both of their worlds shift around them.

* * *

Mor Dhona greets her with its customary purple skies, and she is quick to find Tataru and ask after the Scions and Krile. She leads Adia further into the Rising Stones where they find Krile tending to Thancred’s body, while the others lay lifeless in beds of their own.

Krile regards them both with a sigh as they enter, and expresses her regrets about her inability to afford them enough time to find a way home.

“Stiff and cold,” Krile says as Adia observes the twins, “all of them. As if they were made of wax. Barely alive at all. And they had been doing so well. Save for occasional signs of aetheric instability, they appeared to be in passable health. Then, quite without warning, things took a turn for the worse. A change for which even Master Matoya could offer no explanation. She could only remind me that the soul is yet an unknown frontier, and that much and more lies beyond our ken.”

Adia frowns at this, mind likely racing with questions and tests and above all a harrowing concern for her friends, but Krile is quick to soothe her worries as best she can. “But let’s not lose heart just yet. At times like these, it is all the more important that we remain positive,” she says with a smile. “Why, I but this moment succeeded in quelling a fluctuation in Thancred’s aether. And while the others have weakened, they have remained relatively stable. I believe I may leave my post for a moment. So come, let me hear your tale outside.”

Adia follows Tataru and Krile out to the main chamber of the Rising Stones after one last look at the bodies of her friends and, though she does not see him, Emet-Selch’s ghost.

Outside, she appraises them of the situation on the First — what little they know for certain, at least, and that they merely wait in an anticipatory fear for Elidibus to enact his plan. She tells them of the Exarch’s plan to bring the souls back to the Source, as well, and though she knows how fragile a plan such as that could be, they both remain optimistic.

As is her wont.

Tataru asks a favor and Adia of course obliges, but when she exits the Seventh Heaven tavern and finds what she needs in Rowena’s, she secludes herself in an empty hallway and her hand begins to glow with the spell she had crafted the night before.

“Can we save them?” she asks, apropos of nothing. She looks to him and though it takes him off-guard; it’s the second time she has intentionally sought his counsel, sought _him._ Above all she looks so _scared,_ so uncertain, and it prods at a vulnerable, delicate part of Emet-Selch he wishes he could keep buried.

But he can only shrug in response. “Such a feat has never been attempted, and with good reason. It could mean the permanent demise of the Scions if unsuccessful.” Her face falls at this, and he has not the time nor the patience to unpack the feeling in his chest. “But if anyone could, it’s you. It will not be _easy,_ of course, but when has it ever been?”

To that she offers a small smile, still troubled and lacking certainty but now with renewed purpose. “Right. Of course.”

And so she stands straighter and makes her way back to the Rising Stones, ready to return to the First and all that awaits her there.

**Author's Note:**

> not sure how often this will update but emet-selch lives in my brain now so you can safely assume there will be more
> 
> come hang out with me [@shoutzwastaken](http://twitter.com/shoutzwastaken) i have hot takes
> 
> or you could come hang out with [my good friends in the book club](https://discord.gg/X6NJJAb) they have even hotter takes


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